Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

The pandemic continues to disappoint and ruin plans in so many ways, mostly not health related.  Along with job loss; reduced income or no income; no health insurance; homelessness; online work and online schooling; postponed or canceled surgeries and specialized physician check ups; and hundreds of state and county fairs, annual conventions, entertainment and concert tours along with New York’s Broadway season canceled for the year—Europe has banned travelers from the U.S.  Just when my husband and I were contemplating a trip to Austria, Europe won’t have us.  The U.S. has done such a poor job of controlling the virus.  And we’re from Texas, an international laughingstock due to crowded bars and partiers sans masks and social distancing.  We of all Americans will not be permitted entry into Europe.

Being a Texas native, I just assumed the virus would not survive our hot weather, which is at least half the year.  But I was wrong.  I also thought the airline industry could use the business.  Remembering the aftermath of 9/11, I wanted to support the critically vital yet economically crippled industry.  Instead, this year I only have memories of traveling the world.  And here they are!

India January 2013

Namaste, y’all!  Of all the places in the world, India was the one country I most wanted to see.  Not sure why, other than I’m a big Beatles’ fan and they spent time in India, and George Harrison, my favorite Beatle, was deeply influenced by the country and Eastern religion.  So, OM and peace. 

While working on a master’s degree in liberal studies, a professor was forming a Study Abroad course to India.  ‘Yeah, right. Like I’m going to India,’ I thought sarcastically to myself.  But … the words that flowed from my mouth were: “I always wanted to go to India!”  I studied the proposal, noting January is the best time to go there, and I would be with colleagues and a professional tour guide.  Then I researched traveling to India and found disconcerting points to consider.  At the time, polio and many other diseases were still communicable; Western women are considered promiscuous and may be hit on or attacked; beggars should be ignored; tourists should not wear jewelry; travelers are advised to avoid street food, tap water, ice and even fresh fruits and vegetables due to possible contamination.  Tourists are cautioned to brush teeth with bottled water.  A travel nurse advised a series of vaccines including Hepatitis A & B, Tetanus, Typhoid and rabies. Monkeys, dogs and other animals freely roam India and potentially can bite.

Undaunted, however, I signed up for the Multicultural Teambuilding Course: Study Abroad India!  The flight was 14 hours, landing in Dubai briefly to hop a connecting flight to Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, India.  Meeting our tour guide and with luggage in hand, our group walked out of the airport and into throngs of somber Indians awaiting arrival of loved ones.  The evening air smelled of ancient mold and modern chemicals.  My eyes burned the entire trip.  The tour bus would provide cold bottled water daily.  We sped off to our hotel, the driver occasionally honking along with many others winding through the busy crowded highways and busted streets.  Before entrance into the hotel, our luggage was scanned through an outdoor conveyer belt.  Meanwhile, we Americans were greeted by a female manager dressed in a customary sari.  She summarily painted a small single red dot on our foreheads, above and between the brows. 

During the mornings, we attended lectures about India and the international business world then spent afternoons touring.  The adventure was through northern India’s Golden Triangle: New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur.  The morning breakfast buffet was always an exotic assortment of foods, each labeled with long complex words too hard to remember or pronounce.  For lunch and dinner, I stuck with naan bread and tofu with curry sauce, a vegetarian diet.  By the last lecture, we learned that India’s billion people celebrate millions of gods by lots of festivals featuring a wide array of foods.  We witnessed a couple of large weddings, complete with painted elephants and Bollywood music.

While traveling India, I found the people to be warm, smiling and cordial, always greeting with prayer hands and a bow while saying “Namaste,” a Sanskrit word that means “God in me sees God in you.”  And they expected you to repeat the customary greeting back to them, which I did.  The many tourist sites we visited, however, were met upfront with a crowd of beggars, male teens who could not walk because they had polio or other crippling deformities.  With their skinny legs folded, they held their hands in back on the ground and pushed their torsos forward, stopping by balancing one hand in back and the other outstretched while they asked, “To give, ma’am?  To give?”  This was heartbreaking.  In fact, in New Delhi hundreds of small short tents are set up right beside the highways.  They are the housing for migrant workers who maintain a centuries-old tradition of living in tents to move where there is work.  In the early morning hours, these groups warmed themselves around small fires on the side of busy streets.

India’s Taj Mahal in Agra was the most breathtaking vision.  It was made with crystals and appears to glow from afar.  The historic intricately designed white mosque is guarded with armed police, and pictures are forbidden inside the tomb, plus visitors must slip a pair of booties over shoes which are not permitted inside a mosque tomb.

Lasting Impressions: The poverty.  We Americans are so blessed beyond measure.  Masses of people who appear to be ill.  Blue skies yet burning eyes.  Overcrowded and littered streets with bustling vehicles and the occasional lone dog walking alongside traffic, even curling up to sleep.  Men urinating on the streets.  Monkeys running and jumping shrub to shrub.  Squatters, toilets at ancient tourist sites.  Colorfully decorated elephants walking down mountains, guided to weddings in the cities.  Business vehicles painted to personify female gods.  Business buildings with large statues of Ganesh or a mural of a blue Krishna.  The symbol for OM and swastikas everywhere.  Camels hitched to low trailers loaded with cargo, slowly clopping along busy streets beside speeding automobiles, small motorcycles and Tuk Tuk taxis.  The smell of Ylang Ylang.  The white pentagon temple celebrating all five world religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  The serenity of India’s people as well as animals.  Tears when first seeing the Taj Mahal.  Tears and prayers for the beggars.

 England July 2013

My lucky year for world travel continued with an opportunity for a required graduate writing course: historic fiction that featured a Study Abroad course to World War II sites in England and France!  The nonstop flight was only nine hours.  We arrived at London’s Heathrow Airport in the early morning and met Yvonne, our tour guide.  Her parents met during the war, one French, the other British.  She spoke both languages.  Outside the airport were hundreds of bicycles on racks.  Our travel bus took us briskly through a two-lane highway with heavily wooded terrain, thick tall trees abutting pavement on both sides.  Trying to look ahead made me drowsy.  Then there were the roundabouts, felt at every intersection.  Ohhh.  Ohhh.  Ohhh.  Our first stop was Oxford: a fairy tale village where people still live in thatched-roof cottages that surround the world renown university along with churches and graves dating back to the 10^th century.  The early morning air in July was cool bliss.  The sun came out around 4 a.m. and set after 10 p.m.  Standing beneath a shade tree was noticeably cooler, something I’ve yet to experience all my summers in Texas.

London is a world-class city compared to picturesque rural Oxford yet charming with tall Victorian buildings renovated for modern business and apartments.  We attended outdoor theatre at The Globe, sipped wine while walking along the Thames River, and toured Winston Churchill’s war bunker.     

Then a fellow Beatles’ fan and I walked to Abbey Road to see the area of the famous studio where the Beatles recorded their albums.  First, we ventured into London’s complex subway system called The Tubes then walked a few blocks to Abbey Road.  At the time, the entire area in front of the studio entrance was pasted with lots of graffiti, thanking the Beatles for their music and many endearing sentiments to John Lennon.  Fans had written messages on every section of concrete walls, bricks, cement block posts and even iron rods on the gates.  The studio sets quite a way from the graffitied entrance.  The graffiti was mind boggling and then to think the government allowed it.  Lots of tourists, individually and in groups of four, continuously stopped traffic for photos while walking the exact spot as the Beatles did for the cover of Abbey Road—including me.

Lasting Impressions:  Flower boxes outside every window house, apartment and business.  Commerce closing early evening, leaving open only the pubs and night venues.  No convenience stores.  Free museums.  Fish & chips served with peas.  Baked beans for breakfast.  Feeling completely at home, no doubt from ancestral DNA.  Walking alone in Oxford at night and feeling safe.  All the Beatle fans from around the world hanging out along Abbey Road.  British charm.

We left England via the ‘Chunnel,’ the massive train system that crosses the English Channel to northern France and includes deep underwater sections.

France July 2013

We stayed in the village of Bayeux, where businesses and apartments still fly weathered flags representing WWII Allied Nations. At dusk we walked along cobbled roads and slender streets deep into the town center to find restaurants. The next day we visited the Museum of the Battle of Normandy, with none of us leaving with a dry eye.  We drove through the French countryside and ate baggette sandwiches at a seaside amusement park. Then we walked the beaches of Normandy where today children play freely. Several of us collected sand from the beach. Later we toured the Normandy American Cemetery—where gusts of warm ocean breeze caressed each of us standing together high upon the cliffs and slowing turning to view the cemetery’s somber panorama.  Graves are divided by U.S. state and eternally guarded by trees from the deceased’s specific home.

We left for Paris, caught a light summer rain, and crossed the Seine River that snakes through the city.  Unfortunately, at the last minute we were bounced from a hotel adjacent to the Eiffel Tower.  Instead, we drove right past the massive iron structure and continued clear across the city to a European micro motel.

Lasting Impressions: (Paris smells like urine.  Everywhere.)  The French prefer you to speak French.  People standing very close to each other in lines.  Body funk, theirs not mine.  Hot hotel rooms. Political graffiti throughout Paris on statues, steps, buildings, park benches.  Billboards and music videos with topless women.  Intimidated by language and an unfamiliar and unfriendly city.    

Ireland July 2017

Hoping to spot a wee fairy or sprite, and because I learned my ancestral DNA is one quarter Irish, I joined a tour group to southern Ireland along the western Atlantic coast.  Sites included the community of Kerry where the bustling downtown area featured a middle school band playing American pop tunes.  We ate at a pub and sang along with the nightly entertainer, a male singer with an Irish brogue who accompanied himself on acoustic guitar and included a couple of American songs by John Denver.  We drove 100-plus miles along the Ring of Kerry, riding up through rugged mountains so high the clouds shadowed the terrain.  The sites were rugged slate cliffs, cottages, and the Atlantic coast.  On to the Cliffs of Moher, we walked up steep slippery slate against strong winds and mist.  An umbrella is quickly ruined and simply out of place in Ireland. From the top of the cliffs, the view was thrilling combined with the feel and the smell of the sea crashing onto the cliffs.  Later we toured ancient portals, areas marked and preserved by the government.  The portals were thought to have been used by the ancient Irish many centuries ago to step into another dimension to seek guidance through life.

One night we dined inside an early medieval castle for a banquet whereby our only utensil was a knife.  The following day, we roamed around castle ruins on the way to Dublin.   In the city we saw the Book of Kells at Trinity College.  The book produced by monks dates back at least 800 years and tells the story of Jesus mixed with Celtic legends, beliefs and symbols.  On my own, I toured the Whiskey Museum, interestingly located across from the college.  I learned whiskey is derived from an Irish word that means “water of life.”  At the tour’s end, we tasted four whiskeys.  The taste is … not for me.  The tour concluded with dinner and a live performance called Celtic Nights featuring authentic dancing to acoustic instruments, notably wooden spoons.

Lasting Impressions

The Emerald Isle, green foliage everywhere.  Their love of music; even the green flag carries a harp.  A folk musician at every stop: guitar, banjo, accordion.  Playing along on an enormous community drum. The Irish love of American pop music; even a taxi driver sang along to 1970s pop songs from his radio.  Fairy trees. Hearty meals (thick seafood soup with rustic Irish bread).  Dublin’s Poetry Corner and the city’s marquee celebrating the country’s famous music entertainers and writers.  Medieval Mead (honey wine).  The ever-changing weather.  Land of red heads.  No snakes.  St. Patrick’s encircled Christian cross everywhere.

She awoke.  Birds chirped joyously outside the hospital window.  She cleared her throat, dry after surgery, blinked to focus on white walls with pleasant art.  Her doctor was right.  She felt peaceful, content and happy after the memory implant was adjusted.  Celeste was overwhelmed with feelings of happiness.  She was in awe.  Her eyes welled with tears.  She found herself smiling.

“You ready to go home?” she heard her husband ask, feeling his hand cup hers.  “Home?” she asked.

“Remember?  Our house in the woods.  We call it Glendale,” Marc said, trying to coax her memory.

Yes, she remembered home.  She recalled her work as an American history teacher and research into race relations.  But then …  Nothing.

“I need to get home and continue my research,” she said as Marc waved a hand to cut her off.  “No, there will be none of that for a while.  That’s what ignited the implant.

“Remember?  The chip prevents certain recall,” he warned.  “Shhhh,” he lipped with a kiss on her head.

“What’s wrong with me?” Celeste asked.  “Why was I in the hospital?”

“The chip was malfunctioning,” Marc said.  “Made you have bad headaches.

“You don’t remember blacking out, all the nausea and severe pain?  Right here,” he said touching her forehead.

She then felt serene.  She was aware of her feelings.  In a few weeks after summer break, she would be ready to return to teaching.  Research into American history would have to wait.  It wasn’t worth the suffering and the day surgery to correct her memory implant.

They drove across the bridge into a bucolic landscape that greets arrivals to Glendale.  Celeste gazed into the vista, inhaling fresh earth, feeling the breeze of an unusually cool summer day, listening to birds and the dogs happy to greet them, searching the familiar terrain of blue sky and hills on the horizon.  Her senses were restored fully.  Vividly.  She would always want to remember this.

Bettie and Luna, rescue dogs of unknown lineage, jumped on her before she could get out of the SUV.  “Now get down,” Marc ordered the pets.  “It’s all right,” Celeste said, hugging each one.  “They love me.  Dogs always forgive and forget.”

Inside the house, Celeste walked to the study.  Papers and books were strewn across the rug.  The desk chair was toppled to the ground.  She straightened up the mess.  “What happened?” she asked Marc.  “I found you unconscious and called 9-1-1.  The paramedics took you to the hospital.  Knew just what to do, what was wrong.”

The memory implant was a high-tech solution to end human hatred that once had gripped the nation into war-like dissent.  Celeste understood that much.  But as she pursued research of American history and racism, reading and watching news accounts about social upheaval during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, her mind was interrupted, short circuited.  It was the chip.  She could not force herself to study to memory the angry divisive era:

Statues toppled as racist relics, originally erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy to honor Southern war heroes in the American Civil War.  Police officers roughly apprehending African Americans, a few of the arrested even dying during the process.  Months of fiery protests against police brutality.  The names of deceased black people, most unarmed and more than one in their own home or on their property, chanted, printed on T-shirts and signs.  Graffiti.  The f word.  The looting from city to city.  Police cars ablaze.  Police and rioters assaulting each other.  The president nowhere to be seen, only heard, his monotone blaming states and cities where riots were bad and dozens of businesses destroyed.  He called on the military to take control, but military leaders refused, citing the Constitution does not allow them to fight their own people on their own land. 

Such violent protests would never occur again.  The chip was a brilliant solution. The ultimate.

If Celeste continued with the research, her memory chip would malfunction again.  Citizens have the chip in order to remove animosity, bigotry and hatred toward others.  This was proven long ago by anthropologists and brain science.  The chips embedded in the brain brought about a longstanding era of peace and tranquility along with productivity surpassing all previous economic times.  The chips simply made everyone live happily ever after. But a history teacher needs to study the past, and people need to know.

The headache came on strong.  She held onto the desk and saw a bouquet of flowers Marc had waiting for her.  She smiled and for a few lingering seconds inhaled every bloom, each with a unique fragrance, together a fresh heavenly scent that filled the room.

************************************************************ 

Celeste and Marc ate protein bars and fruit in the breakfast nook.  Through open windows they watched backyard foliage and critters roam along with their playful dogs.  “Let’s go outside,” she said cheerily.  “No, it’s a little too cool.  I think you should stay indoors another day just to be on the safe side,” Marc advised.

“I know,” she thought aloud.  “Let’s invite the Clarks and Molinas to our house for a cook- out.”

“If that’s what you’d like, I’ll arrange it,” Marc said then sent texts to the two couples.  “How about tonight or tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s fine.  Gives them a little time.  None of us are working this summer session,” Celeste said.

Marc kissed her goodbye, reminding her to take it easy and put away the research project.  She smiled obediently, sipping a cup of coffee.  After he’d left, she watched the two dogs, how they got along but sometime fought each other for a fresh nut or grub worm uncovered in the yard.  The fight broke out, sometimes lasting a minute, usually just a couple of seconds.  No harm done.  They learned to get along.  Celeste wondered why humans needed the memory implant.  Then her mind wondered to more pleasant thoughts.  She had a menu to plan for the barbecue.

******************************************

She found herself in the office again, not sure how she arrived.  Did she go shopping?  Yes.  Where’s the food?  In the fridge.  Did she black out?  Her head throbbed.  This time inhaling flowers didn’t soothe the pain.  Her internet device was set to a city protest in the summer of 2020.  Signs read “Abolish the police,” “End racism,” “Defund the police,” “Black Lives Matter.”  She had typed comments from the protesters expressing the reason for their anger.  She reread the research she had prepared …

“Honey!  Wake up,” Marc told her, holding his wife on the floor, patting her face.

“Why’d you start researching again?  You knew this could happen,” he scolded.

“My head hurts so bad!  I’m bleeding!” Celeste said, realizing the blood came from her nose and ears.  “What’s happening to me?”

Marc lifted her body and rushed to the doctor.

**************************************

The light was bright in her eyes.  “What’s going on?” Celeste asked Dr. Dory.  He clicked a small light on and off in her pupils.  “Dr. Landon, dear, I wish you would understand the purpose of the chip is to prevent unpleasant memories,” he told her.

 She knew.  No one is to read or watch or listen to any work about racism in this country.

“They’re not memories,” Celeste told him, “not my memories or none of ours.  What I’ve been studying are facts, history.  Our nation’s history.  It’s important to know.”

“Why would you want to stir up past controversies that tore our nation apart?” he asked.  “The implant took away all that pain, ill will and bad feelings we humans possess deep within our reptilian brain and even to the frontal lobe.

“We cannot help but be prejudiced and bigoted against people who do not look like us.  This nation tried for close to 300 years.  All that was proven was everyone is prejudiced.  And because of that, we cannot be fair, just and kind.  It would take thousands of years for every human to rise above our inclinations when it comes to racism.”

“No, I don’t think that is true,” Celeste countered.

“What you think does not matter,” the doctor replied.  “The chip solved a host of social problems, deadly and abusive encounters that occurred every single day in this country.  Crime was reduced by 95 percent thanks to the chip.  Now you must stop researching racism.  There is no need to dig into a healed wound, miraculously healed by the memory chip.”

Celeste inhaled deeply and stood up, wobbly but determined to say her piece.  The doctor warned her chip was still unconnected.

“Listen to me,” she said.  “People who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  Remember?  First certain books were banned as racist, then movies, music, then free speech and eventually free thought.  We are living in a society of … morons.”

She slapped her hand over her mouth, realizing the fear of her words.  The doctor grabbed her arm for an injection.  “Please,” she cried then begged, “people need to know the truth, our truth, our past.  Life is about righting the wrongs of the past.  First, we have to know those wrongs and feel for everyone.  We have to understand those who lived before us.”

****************************************************

The cell was dark and cold.  Celeste hugged her body as her teeth chattered.  “Where am I?” she called out.

“Be quiet,” a woman nearby whispered.

“Are we in jail?”

“Detention.  Until our chips work right.”

“Why are you here?”   

“I was researching my family tree to find plantations where they worked in the 1800s.”

“You’re African American?”

“Sure.  You’re white?”

“Yes, does that matter to you?”

“No.  Does my race matter to you?”

“Of course not.  We’ve got to get out of here while our minds are free and clear.”

A small paper note glided on the floor of Celeste’s cell.  She read the plan by her neighbor, Lauren.  A hole was already prepared beneath their adjoining wall.  Celeste lifted a floor tile.  The hole was small and dark.  “I’m going now.”

“I’m way ahead of you,” Lauren whispered.

The women scurried through the underground sewer toward the light of a full moon.  They crawled out into a creek bed, wiped off their jumpsuits and smiled, running quietly into the woods.

“Where should we go?” Lauren asked.

Feeling pain free from a restored soul, Celeste replied, “I don’t know.”

Watching the initial protests over the death of George Floyd by police, a revolting real-life scene brought to us by smart phone videos, I turned to social media and wrote an adage about myself: Still back the Blue.  That’s because there are a half million police officers in America, and their jobs are not easy even for the well trained.  And I wrote Still Back the Blue because just a few years ago, lest we forget, Dallas police officers were gunned down by a sniper during a Black Lives Matter rally, a national shock that brought President Barack Obama to the city to eulogize the slain officers at the nationally televised funeral.

When I was a news reporter, the cop shop featured somber yet approachable police chiefs and sheriffs and was a routine beat for stories on crime, criminal activity and the occasional homicide investigation.  Then with a career change to public school teacher, I found again myself befriending the police, a visible presence on practically every campus.  Reporters, teachers and police work with the same folks.  This is a statement not meant to be insulting.  Crime occurs a lot in poor neighborhoods where nonwhite disenfranchised families are perpetual victims.  A professional, therefore, working within poor communities must convey a disposition of kindness, compassion with a calm level head.

That is not the professionalism captured by cell cam video of a policeman holding his knee over the neck of Mr. Floyd, who police apprehended for allegedly trying to pass a fake bill at a Minneapolis convenience store.  Upon seeing the viral video, our nation held its collective breath along with Mr. Floyd as the scene lasted more than eight minutes, and the handcuffed suspect on his belly told law officers he could not breathe.  Autopsies report Mr. Floyd died not from a cracked windpipe—which emotionally is what we saw—but from a heart attack and/or asphyxiation brought on by pressure applied to his neck.  But no one can wipe away the imagery witnessed via cell cam: a white officer holding his knee on a black man, already under arrest and handcuffed, until he died.  We also saw three other policemen standing at the scene and doing nothing to stop the unjustified deadly arrest.  The live video did capture nearby citizens warning officers that Mr. Floyd can’t breathe.  Then it appears he died right before our eyes.

The past two weeks of angry protests in U.S. cities and around the world against deadly police brutality specifically involving African Americans (and even the recent unjustified shooting death by former and wannabe cops) have drawn together tens of millions of people.  Protest signs read “Stop Police Brutality.”  Agree.  “Stop racism.”  Agree.  “Abolish the Police.”  Can’t agree with that.  And “Defund the Police.”  Wha?  Protesters are up in arms over not one, not two, not three, not four, not five … but in the past few years too-many-to-count deadly police apprehensions of and encounters with unarmed African Americans—some caught on phone cameras by citizens.

What’s going on?

Anyone can research statistics on police use of deadly force.  They are kept by the FBI and more recently by The Washington Post.  The Post’s report is called Fatal Force and shows that 1,028 people were shot and killed by police in 2019.  About the same number of people have been killed by police in the U.S. every year since 2015 when the Post started collecting data.  Almost half of police shootings were of white people, a fifth were Hispanic, and a third (30 percent) were blacks.

However, the report finds blacks are shot and killed disproportionately than whites considering racial demographics (more whites than blacks, still a minority in most cities and in our nation’s total population).  Since 2015, the total number of whites killed by police was 2,416 (population 197 million) while 1,265 blacks (population 42 million) were killed.  The report also noted 889 Hispanics and 797 other/unknown race/ethnicity were killed in police shootings.  About 20 percent of those shot by police had serious mental illnesses.  Most alarming, police body cameras were not worn or were unavailable on most of the shootings, according to Fatal Force.

Of those shot and killed by police, 321 were unarmed.  More than 3,000 of the deceased had a gun.  Some had toy guns: 180.  Most killed by police were men (5,130) and 235 women.  The statistic is low for those shot while fleeing the police, but 3,375 were not fleeing officers.  This may point to another problem for the police.

Last year was the deadliest for police shootings since statistics were recorded by the newspaper.  Still, each year marked close to 1,000 police shooting deaths.  So far in 2020, the figure is 429.

Standing trial

On the flip side, police killed in the line of duty in 2019 was 89: half by criminals during a crime.  In 2018, the figure was 144.  In one year, 64 officers were shot and killed and an additional 21 were killed by ambush.  The statistics for police killed in the line of duty are: 164 in 2015; 171 in 2016; 152 in 2017; and 150 in 2018.  

Police arrest ten million people a year.  Does that cast perspective on what’s going on?  In dealing with crime, police are not encountering the most upstanding citizens.  Let us not forget that the police deal with criminals.  They expect to deal with people who break the law.

But ten million arrests, and less than one percent deaths, should show that 99 percent of police do their jobs well instead of the opposite.  They protect and serve the good citizens and try to catch the bad guy.  We pay them to do this because otherwise each of us would be left with taking the time to stalk and investigate someone who may or may not have caused a crime against us.  Every one of us cannot play cops with no training and assume we’ll remain calm when we want to impose our own justice and shoot to kill.

There are close to 687,000 law officers, and the figure is down quite a bit from just a few years ago.  The racial makeup of our nation’s police force is 77 percent white and 13 percent black.  By city, the figures, from 2013, were:

Los Angeles: white 35 percent, black 11 percent, Hispanic 43 percent

Dallas: white 54 percent, black 25 percent, Hispanic 18 percent

Houston: white 45 percent, black 23 percent, Hispanic 25 percent

New York: white 52 percent, black 16 percent, Hispanic 26 percent

New Orleans: white 38 percent, black 58 percent, Hispanic 2 percent

Chicago: white 52 percent, black 25 percent, Hispanic 19 percent

Baltimore: white 50 percent, black 40 percent, Hispanic 7 percent

Philadelphia: white 57 percent, black 33 percent, Hispanic 8 percent

Minneapolis: white 80 percent, black 9 percent, Hispanic 4 percent.

Police racial demographics often do not represent community makeup.  Usually the number of white officers is more than the demographic while black and Hispanic officers come short of matching the real community racial and ethnic demographics.  And all of that should not matter.  By now every American should be able to deal with people as individuals and not with racial, ethnic and socioeconomic prejudices and bigotry.  That is practically rule number one and has been in this country for decades.  That is our community and nation’s expectation.  Yet again another unarmed black man is shot or killed by a police officer who is usually white.  Americans want those incidents—whatever the reason—stopped NOW, and they are no longer willing to sit idly by when practically every day another citizen cell cam shoots a police encounter that in the public’s eye should never have ended in death.

The ERA is still not law of the land.  Let me rephrase that: The Equal Rights Amendment has never been passed into law.  Can anyone believe this in the year 2020, the 21^st century, our most equalizing and open-minded time to date in American history, this era of modern reasonable women-can-work-any-job (except U.S. President)?  I’m … I’m … speechless.

Nevertheless.  Perhaps given our post-feminist society—where men can stay home and raise the kids, where same sex couples can marry and adopt children, where the wife may earn more than her husband and no one cares, where women can apply for any job and run businesses and corporations—we’ve all just settled down and assumed women had the same rights as men under U.S. law.  Isn’t sex discrimination illegal?  The Equal Rights Amendment, which dates back in similar proposed legislation to the 1920s, would ensure women shall have equal rights anywhere in the U.S.  Well, as the ERA’s most famous opponent Phyllis Shlafly would say, doesn’t the business world already provide this by now?  Everyone supports equal rights for women.  So why has the ERA been so damn hard to pass into law?  Ladies, follow the men.

And by men, I mean our worldwide male-dominated cultures and societies since the beginning of time, our man-centered religions and education, our ancient family structures that dictate men are providers and women bear the children while cooking and cleaning simultaneously.  With the realization that the ERA has remained in limbo for decades, we can clearly see this old worn-out sexist stereotype still exists among our equally old and worn-out congressmen and Mr. Man senators.  Maybe since 2018 with the largest number of women to date voted into U.S. Congress, the ERA soon will be the law it should have been (and many Americans thought it already was especially by now).

The ERA mystique

Somewhere between the saying credited to our nation’s sexiest feminist, Gloria Steinem, the one that goes “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” and the equally deadpan depiction of marriage credited to the feminist movement’s founder Betty Friedan, that for women marriage is at best a “comfortable concentration camp,” lies the mystical entwinement of the sexes.  Men used to be oblivious to women feeling any other way than happy and content being married and having children and raising them and tutoring them and driving them to their activities and cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping and sewing and running household errands and managing the home and yards.  Whose life wouldn’t be fulfilled?     

In 1972, I proclaimed myself a women’s libber.  I was 10 years old and told everyone I knew.  Mom didn’t mind, probably cheered me on.  In my neighborhood, my mother was the only woman who worked.  She was a teacher.  She also grew up with nine brothers.  Shoot, Carol Burnett performed skits as a loud-mouthed bossy women’s libber on her comedy show every Saturday night.  Loretta Lynn sang The Pill, and I understood the sentiment: Women don’t want to be pregnant all their lives.  Cher and Streisand and every woman in show biz proclaimed they, too, were women’s libbers on the Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin shows every weekday afternoon.  Then there was TV’s Maude which Mom and I watched every Monday night.  A women’s libber was the thing to be.  We weren’t about to return to the old days of staying home with the children, not going to college, not having a career, not earning our own money, not feeling free.

Then something really strange happened in my family.  We started going to church.  Not just any church but a fundamentalist one.  To a young women’s libber, a gal who had drive and ambition and wasn’t gonna let a man hold me back, the cultural whiplash was mind blowing.  The church taught that women are to help and serve their husbands; their place in the home is to be a supportive silent adoring companion; they do, too, want to have children; they shouldn’t work or have a career if it interferes with the home and family.  And the church used a lot of Bible to prove this way of life, of coupling, of family, of God’s intention. 

But, I was a women’s libber.  I had all these goals and plans.  Getting married and having babies was not my priority at least until my late 20s or 30s.  In sermons, the women’s lib movement would come up as a deal with the devil to break up the family home.  What’s right is women should be married and should be mothers.  This was the 1970s, and divorce was becoming very common.  Were divorced women going against God if they worked, had to work, and maintain an apartment while raising their kid or kids?  They usually had custody.  The church had life figured out.  Women in that predicament should pray for a husband.  It was the only way she would be truly happy.

The church also taught that the National Organization for Women was anti-God and run by a bunch of lesbians.  (Like that even mattered.)  Feminists have no place in God’s church.  Wow wee.  This was gonna be a personal problem for little ol’ me, Ms. Independent.     

Needless to say, the church supported Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, initiating the Reagan Revolution to return to a 1950s’ America of which I only knew from black-and-white TV reruns.  As a young adult woman, I split and went to a secular college where the female professors were indeed feminists, and the older sisters enlightened us young women and men about how far back and how deeply entrenched the male hierarchy reached, even brainwashing females into living lives that were not their own.   That was all I needed to hear.  Live your own life.  Speak your own mind.  Think for yourself.  I was restored to my women’s libber mindset.  That was the real me.  Still is.

Take it from here

The push to pass the ERA in the 1970s was the subject of a TV series called Mrs. America, with the theme song from the disco era, A Fifth of Beethoven, instead of the women’s movement’s actual theme song during the early ’70s, I am Woman.  Guess that song couldn’t have been modernized by one of today’s female artists.  Each episode focused on the most famous women who came to national prominence during the ERA fight, especially anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly.  She I remember.  Conservatives and fundamentalists would have supported her wholeheartedly.  Good woman, dutiful wife and together homemaker, at her heart she was just as much a women’s libber as the rest of us.  She was blessed with help supervising her six kids and cooking and housecleaning.  Mrs. Schlafly (and you better have called her that) went around the nation speaking against the ERA, claiming the amendment would destroy the family unit and the very fabric of American society.  She linked the ERA and feminism to an ungodly communistic socialistic revolution that would make men and women totally equal (asexual?), where gender roles would be blurred, men would raise children, more women would not have children, and young women would be drafted to fight wars alongside men.  None of this was the language or intent of the ERA, which premise is about equal pay for equal work and equal opportunity for jobs—something everyone believes in 2020, and we have for decades.

Mrs. Schlafly was a formidable opponent and had millions of supporters especially from the Moral Majority.  The ’70s feminists were unprepared for the America I knew, mindsets that for women uphold traditional family values no matter what the circumstances like death of a husband, abuse or divorce.  This is the America, and it’s most of the country, that Reagan knew and so does Trump.  Mrs. Schlafly’s final book, released after her death, called on conservatives to consider supporting Trump.  This enormous gap between traditionalists and feminists somehow continues to exist today no matter how … laughable.  Many marriages end in divorce.  Many women have children without marriage.  Many men are OK with it.  The law had to get involved to make deadbeat dads pay child support.  The Reagan Revolution did one thing to tilt Americans toward accepting feminist ideals, however: Most women had to start working because the economy was so bad.  The Leave it to Beaver family was in the past, and every woman (and man) in American knew it.

After all these decades, time in which I grew from a tomboy to a career woman to an aging though wiser female, the ERA may get a federal vote after the 2020 election if a Democrat is elected President and more Democrats are elected to the U.S. Senate.  As it stands now, the current Senate has no intention of even entertaining the thought of passing the silly old ERA given all the nation’s other problems.  But Americans, women and men, and our society have changed, permanently and at least for half of us for the better.  There’s no putting Jeannie back in her bottle.

April 2020 will go down in history as one extremely long painful monotonous nightmare—more so in places like New York City than all the thousands of cities and locales elsewhere in the vast territory of the United States of America, but for all of us the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes.  Why?  Why did everybody have to stay home and either work online or not work at all?  Health experts predicted a deadly pandemic for which American hospitals and cities were unprepared.  By year’s end 2019, all eyes were on China’s clandestine handling of the fast-spreading COVID-19 or the novel coronavirus.  Americans thought mistakenly that it couldn’t happen here.  The entire U.S. economy shut down to save some lives and prevent for the most part big-city hospitals from being overrun with the latest contagion?  That is exactly what ended up happening—except without all the drama across the nation, just in NYC and similar huge metropolises, congested American cities like the ones we’re used to watching in TV dramas.

President Donald Trump, in a total about-face given his usual response to zig while government zags, ultimately decided to go with ‘the science’ and agreed to the slow down and eventual shut down of every aspect of American work in commerce, education and government save ‘essential’ services.  Notice all those in power—including corporations who pay for the daily TV ads promoting how we still need to eat restaurant meals or how our isolation has brought us together through the internet and our devices (not a single reference to old-fashioned phone calls)—perceive a month or two of personal lost income as no big deal, even the President.  They have the resources to survive a financial setback.  But not the American people, the vast majority living paycheck to paycheck, every dollar relied upon to balance a monthly budget of mortgage or rent, groceries, medications, insurance, utilities, bills and life’s incidentals.   

And the President thinks Americans who finally started protesting at their state capitols and city halls have cabin fever?  No, sir, they are people millionaires and billionaires do not understand.  Americans actually want to pay their bills.  Their greatest fear is losing their home, cars and everything.  The stay-home-stay-safe mandate was the worst mistake made by government at all levels.  Americans were not asked what they thought, if they were willing to risk their health and their families if they continued working during a pandemic. Americans would have answered, “Hell, yeah!  Let’s do it!  Anything to earn a paycheck.”  Hospital administrators and virus scientists sounded the alarm of a pandemic that potentially could kill millions of Americans and make tens of millions sick.  But that is not what happened, and it is not what is going to happen.  We see that now.

Along for the ride

The mass media went along with presenting the practical advice and educated assumptions from medical science circles to practice common-sense health guidelines to avoid the coronavirus (stay home, wash hands, avoid crowds).  In spotlighting what the medical experts have to say about avoiding this illness, cable and even local TV have presented nothing but coronavirus news 24-hours-a-day.  Fine for the first two weeks but then overkill and by now unnecessary.  Just today one of the top cable news networks included a non-coronavirus news story, this one about a missing woman.  Life, the good and bad, did not stop just because of a pandemic.  But to hear the media tell it, it did.  The national news, made up of professional journalists, have covered every angle, the same angles, of the pandemic ad nauseum.

But one angle the big-time media missed goes along with their failure to predict Donald Trump would win the presidency.  This time they missed the American workers’ perspective during a pandemic, which is not an uncommon health crisis, not our first rodeo.  Americans want to go back to work, go back to earning money.  Hell, they never wanted to stop working.  Americans did not want to stay home to avoid getting sick or perchance infect their loved ones or others.  If asked, they would do anything to keep a job: work six feet apart, wear masks, permit temperature checks, go directly home after work, even accept a lower wage and shorter hours especially if temporary.  By now a couple hundred million Americans are realizing their rights were trampled even if temporarily and with the best of intentions.  The lawsuits will come as America is the most litigious nation in the world.  People will sue over their child’s missed education, their family’s missed income and inability to pay bills, even their misdiagnoses whether positive or negative coronavirus or their other infections and ailments sidelined due to the red alert for COVID-19.

Hindsight is 20/20.  While a world-class nation like Sweden carried on sans panic by allowing citizens to choose sheltering at home or continue working during the pandemic, the USA was caught pants down with no pandemic preparation (sorely lacking abundant medical supplies, respiratory equipment and emergency field hospitals).  No, instead, for some convoluted reason, our nation chose the worst-case scenario to close the entire economy, half of which is from small businesses, and send out billions of dollars in stimulus checks and business loans.  Why?  Why was the greatest, strongest, most prosperous nation on earth caught off guard and ill-prepared to carry on during another pandemic?  The national media and talking heads covered that already.  And it doesn’t help for President Trump to lead daily briefings on the pandemic with antagonistic quips to national reporters there to cover it.

We got it.  We’re in heap big trouble.  We’re reminded every day on the news and online.  Tens of millions of American workers have applied for unemployment because their jobs aren’t coming back.  Some financial experts predict an economic depression.  Many small businesses are closed for good not because of the pandemic but because of how government handled the pandemic: convincing everyone to stay home for the sake of their loved ones and forcing everyone to stop the spread.

Well, the daily numbers indicate a job well done, best that could be expected, much better actually.  This pandemic is mild compared to the Spanish flu of 1918 which took the lives of 50 million worldwide and in the U.S. less than one million dead.  Even a hundred years ago, Americans during that pandemic had to wear masks to avoid contracting the flu.  That was fair.  And they kept working, too.  Maybe the spread and death were high because everyone continued working.  Times were so different then.  People didn’t need much.  Probably everybody had no health insurance.  Life was less complex.  And there was no flu vaccine, still today only used by less than half the U.S. population.

Compared to today, it’s not why but how, with all our collective intelligence in this 21^st century high tech age, did we go off the rails in dealing with a pandemic?  It’s bat crazy from the top down.  And that is what all the protests are about.  Americans are not foolish or stupid about health, new viruses and pandemics.  If you’re gonna survive in this country, hell on the planet, you take chances every day.  The Swedes understand about building a tolerance to a new virus, that life is survival of the fittest and some will die but not everyone, not the majority.  Americans are willing to do whatever it takes to work and apparently to just survive.  The way this turned out is why so many Americans, 70 percent without a college education, are suspicious of the highly educated and distrustful of the government.  Lots of lessons here all the way around.

Living the American life can be bittersweet, like that song Everybody’s Talkin’ from the movie Midnight Cowboy.   An upbeat tempo yet somber tone sets an ironic theme of stubborn optimism to which every American can relate: personal aspirations despite countless setbacks and heedless freedom to wonder around this great land in hopes of finding a better life or at least a better view.  Now with the pandemic and governmental mandates to stay home, without pay, we’re dealing with a very bitter experience—the worst time ever according to Willie Nelson (who grew up in the Depression Era).  To pass the time, I thought about American influence especially during the 20^th century in music, movies and pop culture.  Being a child of pop music, a religious listener of Top 40 radio back in the day, I formulated a list of what I consider our country’s most ‘American’ songs: not patriotic but songs reflecting the American experience in all our truest intentions, shortcomings and slow-to-realize social evolutions.  The list starts with the American Revolutionary War and ends with a Taylor Swift song.  The list was revised and edited until compiled into an entertaining assortment, well to me.  Too, American pop music—expressed throughout the recent centuries in folk, gospel, blues, country, jazz and rock idioms—not only reveals our collective story but also amplifies our best and worst characteristics: a warring inclination; willingness to die for liberty; and most assuredly fight in print and vocal protest for the right to pursue personal happiness, to live our own lives, and right or wrong to love the very ones who make our hearts sing.

18^th Century/American Revolutionary War Era

Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier was an old Irish song, Siul A Ruin.  Best accompanied by a dulcimer, with a timbre reminiscent of the Old World, and sung in an ethereal soprano voice, the beautiful morose lament pierces the heart with plain lyrics telling of an earlier age when womenfolk remained behind during war while anticipating the loss of their beloved soldier:

“I’d sell my clock.  I’d sell my reel.

  Likewise, I’d sell my spinning wheel

  to buy my love a sword of steel.

  Johnny has gone for a soldier.”

Amazing Grace, written in 1772 by John Newton, known in his day as a drunkard and slave trader, the spiritually profound lyrics were inspired after he survived a violent storm at sea.  Amidst the dangerous turmoil, Newton, not particularly religious though raised a Puritan, called on the Almighty for divine intervention, to save his life and everyone on board.  Miraculously, the storm passed with no harm to crew or vessel.  This universal song of faith and humble acceptance of God’s grace has been performed so often, its status has risen to American anthem.  The lyrics weren’t set to music until decades later, using the British tune New Britain.  From the opening stanza, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” the song declares a personal revelation of God’s patient love and enduring companionship despite our human faults and failings:

“I once was lost but now am found,

 was blind but now I see.”

19^th Century

Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child is perhaps the most poignant of all African-American spirituals, songs by slaves.  This song reportedly was first performed in concert in 1870 according to gospel music archives.  The song also sets the format for traditional blues lyrics, repeating a line two or three times then adding a lyrical twist at the end:

“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.

  Sometimes I feel like a motherless child

  a long way from home, a long way from home.”

The song resonates today as the feelings are universal.  Though the lyrics directly refer to a people taken from their Mother Homeland and plopped into a strange land of unknown language, culture, clothing, music and religion—a place where no one loved and cared for them—the song is relatable to anyone who feels orphaned or out of place.

Wabash Cannonball, originally The Great Rock Island Route, is a traditional American folk song dating back to the 1880s.  The song’s history is said to have come from the hobo community, stragglers who jumped trains to ride from town to town.  The upbeat tempo expresses American freedom and the newfound excitement of speed, which would become an impressive attribute defining our country during the 20^th century:

“From the great Atlantic Ocean to the wide Pacific shore,

 from the queen of flowing mountains to the south belt by the shore,

 she’s mighty tall and handsome and known quite well by all.

 She’s a modern combination called the Wabash Cannonball.”

Early 20^th Century

Will the Circle Be Unbroken?, made popular in the 1920s by the Carter Family recording and radio play, was written as a Christian hymn in 1907 by Ada R. Habershon and Charles H. Gabriel.  The Carters rewrote the lyrics for a tear-jerking funeral song: 

“I was standing by my window

 on one cold and cloudy day

 when I saw the hearse come rolling

 for to carry my mother away.

 Will the circle be unbroken

 by and by, Lord, by and by?

 There’s a better home a-waitin’

 in the sky, Lord, in the sky.”

The hymn’s original lyrics spoke of the entire family in time reaching eternity, completing the family’s transition from the physical world to the spiritual hereafter.  But the Carter rendition is more profound and implies a family remains encircled and together even if one member or more are deceased.  The family circle remains unbroken.  The hymn is pure American in its Christian roots and certainty of a better life in the hereafter.

Solace, Scott Joplin’s most beautiful piano rag, is distinctively Spanish influenced.  Written in 1909, the instrumental piece uniquely features a tango beat.  The piece was used in the 1970s’ movie The Sting.  Joplin was an American original, hard working to his own detriment, and as a musical genius intended to combine musical elements from other cultures.  Sit back and relax sometime by listening to this piece, a bridge between Old West saloons and a turn-of-the-century craze called Ragtime.

God Bless America was written by prolific American songwriter Irving Berlin in 1918 to commemorate the end of ‘the war to end all wars.’  The song was revised and recorded again in 1938 as America soon would embark on another world war.  The song is a prayer, purely American in calling on divine guidance and protection specifically for America as a country:

“God, bless America, land that I love.

  Stand beside her and guide her

  through the night with the light from above.”

This Little Light of Mine seems a typical African-American spiritual, given its blues lyric format.  But it was written as a children’s song in the 1920s by Harry Dixon Loes.  Ever since, it continues to be performed in churches and elementary schools around the world.  What makes the song uniquely American is lyrics that relay self confidence, an individual’s assurance that is based in the spiritual.  The song, sung in first person, implies all God’s children possess a unique talent symbolized as an inner light radiating intelligence and value:

“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.”

Rhapsody in Blue: The fabulous New York composer George Gershwin performed this brilliant musical tribute, combining jazz and modern American classical elements, in 1924, having written it as a last-minute instrumental composition.  Beginning with a swirling clarinet solo, the symbolism is not lost as the optimistic American who awakens to a brand new day.  Stretching to life and full of pride and purpose, he is soon joined by the rest of the population represented by the orchestra and then catapulted to work by strategic cymbal crashes.  Then Gershwin himself improvises on piano assorted syncopated and dazzling melodic phrases.  The famous finale represents day’s end, with the working American proud of occupational duty and livelihood, tired but content, and ready for well-deserved rest, awaiting dreams of even bigger endeavors.

Blue Skies by Irving Berlin came out in 1926.  The song is overflowing with optimism due to newfound love.  Yet it was penned by someone who suffered dark depression and low self esteem.  Unbelievable.  The work itself is classic American in that its creator is a humble man producing voluminous work and never letting on to his solitary sadness and insecurity:

“Blue skies smiling at me.  Nothing but blue skies do I see.

  … Blue days, all of them gone.  Nothing but blue skies from now on.”

Wildwood Flower was recorded with acoustic guitar in 1928 by the Carter Family.  The tune and lyrics were derivative of another lesser known song, but the Carters’ guitar-playing style, melodic riff with harmony simultaneously, sets it apart as an American folk stylistic masterpiece.  The lyrics tell of a gal wearing colorful flowers in her hair to attract suitors at a dance.  Eventually she settles for a mate who will neglect her as she ages, leaving her feeling like a faded flower still alive in the wild but unappreciated and overlooked.  The upbeat clap-along tempo carrying a song of rue is typical of the American expectation to keep a-goin’ even if heartbroken and unhappy.

Happy Days are Here Again: The originally peppy ditty, chosen by President Franklin Roosevelt as his campaign theme song, was somehow a hit at the beginning of America’s Great Depression.  The song was popularized in 1930 in a movie called Chasing Rainbows.  The upbeat tempo and lyrics ooze American optimism.  Then again, Roosevelt was wealthy and financially secure:

“Happy days are here again!
 The skies above are blue again!

 Let us sing a song of cheer again!

 Happy days are here again!”

Don’t Fence Me In, a Cole Porter and Bob Fletcher song written in 1934, was based on another similar song and reworked by the duo to the familiar hit melding cowboy Westerns with pop orchestra music.  The song inspired a movie or vice versa and represents the American pursuit and longing for land and spacious sky:

“Oh, give me land, lots of land, and the starry skies above.

  Don’t fence me in.

  Let me ride through the wide-open country that I love.

  Don’t fence me in.

  Let me be by myself in the evening breeze

  and listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees.

  Send me off forever, but I ask you please

  don’t fence me in.”

Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing), recorded in 1936 featuring the savage drumming of none other than Gene Krupa, must’ve created a generation gap between fainting Ragtime elders and the energized youth who would be known as Bobby soxers.  Add the growling brass and swirling winds, this Louis Prima tune recorded to fame by the Benny Goodman Orchestra best typifies a new untamed generation of Americans.  The song was first performed by Goodman’s Orchestra at Carnegie Hall as the finale of the premiere Big Band music concert, a music style found highly objectionable by the snooty concert board.  Stressing the off beat, the piece obviously puts front and center elements of African drumming, which would influence the next American generation’s musical taste, rock ’n’ roll. 

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, written by Don Raye and Hughie Prince for the hilarious 1941 Abbott & Costello movie Buck Privates, is a WWII song representing the American attitude that says ‘I’ll do my duty, but I’m gonna have a lot of fun, too.’  GIs frequented canteens to swing dance and jitterbug the night away with lovely gals.  Archival photos and film clips leave the impression young Americans danced throughout the war.  There were dances to raise funds, dances to reinvigorate soldiers, and dances just to socialize and maybe meet prospective sweethearts.  And all that dancing to Big Band music, the greatest music America ever created.  The young Andrew Sisters’ lush harmonies poured over tight lyrics in a brisk tempo catapulted the swingin’ song to the top of the pop charts, number six on a list ranking the most influential songs of the 20^th century:

“He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way.

  He had a boogie style that no one else could play.

  He was the top man at his craft.

  But then his number came up, and he was gone with the draft.

  He’s in the army now, a-blowin’ reveille.

  He’s the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B.”

Mid 20^th Century

I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry, by country & Western icon Hank Williams in 1949, was the B side of an uptempo tune typically preferred in those days by jukebox crowds.  But Williams’ sobering poetic lament became a natural American hit, aptly depicting the sights and sounds realized in solitude.  The singer says he’s so lonesome he could cry, yet he doesn’t—very American: 

“Did you ever see a robin weep

  When leaves begin to die?

  Like me, he’s lost the will to live.

  I’m so lonesome I could cry.”

This Land is Your Land: Just another hit song that tells the world our love affair with our country’s breathtaking and diverse terrain.  Penned by Depression folk hero Woody Guthrie in 1940, this standard American folk song was not recorded until 1951.  The entertainer and singer/songwriter had said he was inspired as an Okie hobo arriving in New York City.  Because of Guthrie’s leftist sympathies, the song may still be thought as subversive with secret meanings supporting socialism or communism.  But nevertheless, the song, sung in every school child concert, expresses the majestic land called America is perhaps the apple of God’s eye and intended for anyone to reside and enjoy, as the refrain goes, “This land was made for you and me.”

Rock ‘n’ Roll Music: By one of the genre’s pioneers, Chuck Berry, this song was an anthem and instant smash, earning it the prestigious title of ‘Oldie but a Goodie’: “It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it.”  The song brings together country & Western flavor with a hard-driving rhythm & Blues beat.  Rock music may have been born in the 1950s, but the beat and spirit particularly in this song would continue to influence countless bands and steer Americans into a new direction when it came to what would be considered pop music.  

Christmastime is Here: America believes in Christmas and has contributed to the world’s collection especially in the 20^th century.  But this 1965 classic from A Charlie Brown Christmas TV special is eloquent though somber, combining elements of jazz piano, brush drumming and beatnik bass.  Written by Lee Mendelson and jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi, the lyrics are as breathtaking as the melody, and at this moment in time not directly related to biblical passage, though the animated show’s storyline is.  The song presents a universal appeal, as mere children ponder if the loving and giving spirit of the holiday season could last throughout the year:

“Christmastime is here, happiness and cheer,

  fun for all that children call their favorite time of year.

  Snowflakes in the air.  Carols everywhere,

  olden times and ancient rhymes of love and dreams to share.”

What a Wonderful World, uniquely sang by beloved American jazz entertainer Louis Armstrong, was written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss.  The song was a quick hit in Great Britain in 1967 but slow charting on American radio.  A throwback to the standard orchestrated American Pop style, Weiss wrote the lyrics specifically to bring the races together, and he wanted Armstrong to sing the song.  Like a jazzy lullaby, the lyrics are carefully crafted to convey optimism, hope and spiritual purpose—traits of American songs that first touch the heart before the mind fully comprehends and respects the message:

“I see skies of blue, clouds of white,

  the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night,

  and I think to myself, ‘What a wonderful world.’”

And When I Die is an uplifting declaration by influential ’60s’ singer/songwriter Laura Nyro.  In the spirit of a raucous minstrel style, her message may have been considered sacrilegious.  She expresses acceptance of the cycle of death and life while asserting no fear of dying.  The song is a sample of the changing attitudes of post-war Americans who by the 1960s were willing to split from traditional Christian teachings and beliefs, even the belief in God.  The song was recorded in 1966 by Peter, Paul & Mary but in 1968 became a major hit for the rock-jazz hybrid band Blood, Sweat & Tears.  And When I Die was a personal favorite of consummate 20^th century American entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.:

“And when I die, and when I’m dead, dead and gone,

  there’ll be one child born and a world to carry on, to carry on.”

My Way became a major late-career hit for America’s most famous crooner Frank Sinatra.  The lyrics were by songwriter Paul Anka who used the melody from a beautiful instrumental tune known in Europe.  Recorded in 1969, the life-affirming ode was an instant hit and remains interestingly enough a staple in the funeral biz.  The song is a good example of American sentiment that wants no one to grieve their death, though the song’s commentary could apply to the end of a romantic relationship.  The lyrics are stoic yet tender.  With no apologies, the lyrics convey one’s satisfaction and responsibility of life’s path and individual choices good and bad:

“Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew

  when I bit off more than I could chew.

  But through it all, when there was doubt,

  I ate it up and spit it out.

  I faced it all, and I stood tall

  and did it my way.”

Rose Garden, written by Joe South (Games People Play) and recorded in the late 1960s by a few notable artists before country singer Lynn Anderson took it to the top of the cross-over charts in 1970, presents in an upbeat tempo, as Americans like, a hard life lesson: practicality beats sentimentality.

“I beg your pardon.  I never promised you a rose garden.

  Along with the sunshine, there’s gotta be a little rain sometime.”

Me and Bobby McGee, Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster’s ode to freedom in having nothing but your jeans, was recorded in the late 1960s by several country artists.  But rock star Janis Joplin would take the song to number one in 1971, her version released to radio after her death.  What makes the song American is an expressed stubborn streak, a don’t-give-a-damn attitude that no one can look down on people who are poor, homeless and rootless:

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Late 20^th Century

Take This Job and Shove It, written by country music outlaw David Allan Coe and sung by Johnny Paycheck, was a huge hit in 1977.  What song could be more blue-collar American?  A sentiment felt by the working man who may not be in control but is willing to say ‘to hell with it’ and go for broke rather than work one more day for The Man in a meaningless job.  Sweet freedom!  Oh, and the song was number one on the charts:

“Take this job and shove it.

  I ain’t working here no more.

  My woman done left and took all the reasons

  I was working for.

  You better not try to stand in my way

  ’cause I’m walkin’ out the door.

  Take this job and shove it.

  I ain’t working here no more.”

I Will Survive, by American songwriters Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris, exemplifies the disco era and was a first-time hit for singer Gloria Gaynor in 1978.  The over-the-top production begins in rubato like a sad ballad but then switches to a joyful dancing celebration and assurance of surviving not only heartbreak but the loneliness and fear of an uncertain future sans romantic love.  The song is about emotional strength.  Americans know they’ll survive anything.  Most of us don’t want no pity party:

“I will survive.

 As long as I know how to love, I know I’ll stay alive.”

Material Girl, by Peter Brown and Robert Rans, was a 1984 super hit by Madonna who took the music world by storm and ruled the decade.  The song is an excellent example of America at the time, overindulging in material things.  But the song’s video storyline culminates with the singer preferring romance with a simple man of little means.  Yeah, right:

“They can beg and they can plead.  But they can’t see the light

  ’cause the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mister Right.”

One Moment in Time was an anthem and pop hit for Whitney Houston, an American singer who arguably possessed the greatest voice of the 20^th century.  The song was written by Albert Hammond and John Bettis for the 1988 Olympics.  Told in first person, the song is about going after your dream, a common theme in America, one that requires courage and belief in oneself:

“I want one moment in time when I’m more than I thought I could be,

  when all of my dreams are a heartbeat away, and the answers are all up to me.”

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Billie Joe Armstrong, lead singer of the alternative rock band Green Day in 1997, returns to an unadorned acoustic sound of guitar accompaniment and male vocal solo enhanced later with a small string orchestra to elevate the song’s message.  The song contrasted the usually loud metal band (American Idiot) and may have been written sarcastically, playing on the phrase ‘good riddance.’  Even so, the song expresses American life in phases, looking back one last time in fondness before moving on to the next stage.  To the rest of the world, the ability to move on in life is our most notable American characteristic:

“Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road,

  time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go.

  So make the best of this test, and don’t ask why.

  It’s not a question but a lesson learned in time.

  It’s something unpredictable but in the end is right.

  I hope you had the time of your life.”     

21st Century

Where is the Love?, by pop rap troupe Black Eyed Peas, presents a host of messages in rapidly rapped verses countered by a smoothly sung chorus repeatedly asking “Where is the love?”  The 2003 song was a collaboration written by group front man will.i.am along with apl.de.ap, Taboo, Justin Timberlake, Ron Fair, Printz Board, Michael Fratantuno, George Pajon, Fiona Davies M. Fratantuno and J. Curtis.  The song presents concerns and suspicions about American government from the FBI to the CIA, terrorist organizations including gangs and the KKK.  Subsequent verses call on parents to teach their children instead of letting them grow up on their own and even shames adults for letting kids watch movies with adult content.  It is a moralistic message, something for which America is well known:

“People killin’.  People dyin.’

  Children hurt, and you hear them cryin.’

  Can you practice what you preach?
  Would you turn the other cheek?

  Father, father, father, help us.

  Send some guidance from above

  ’cause people got me, got me questionin’

  ‘Where is the love?’”

Shake It Off is a fantastic recent smash pop song (and video) by Taylor Swift, recorded in 2014.  Swift wrote the lyrics with songwriters Max Martin and Shellback.  Thinking about herself as a celebrity and how she is often cast in the gossip tabloids, Swift’s lyrical comments indicates the need to carry a sense of humor when others speak unkindly, cruelly and even falsely about you.  It is an American ideal to maintain a sense of humor about oneself and not worry about what others think and say about us, individually and as a nation:

“I go on too many dates, but I can’t make ’em stay.

 At least that’s what people say, mmm, mmm.  That’s what people say, mmm, mmm.

 But I keep cruisin’, can’t stop, won’t stop moving.

 It’s like I got this music in my mind sayin’ it’s gonna be all right.

 ’Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play.

 And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.

 Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake.

 I shake it off.  Shake it off!”

Listen.  We’re all afraid.  Not of the virus so much or even death but of financial ruin.  How are we supposed to pay the bills?  Millions have been laid off, hopefully most with a promise of returning to their jobs in the glorious aftermath—a month, now two, perhaps three, by midsummer …  The only people who are comfortable coasting through this universal economic disaster are the ones with guaranteed monthly income like retirees, the independently wealthy, and the top brass who have the gall to tell the American people to stay home, don’t go to work or school, work online if you can (while figuring a way to pay the bills).  See, they’d never tell us that last part because they are so far removed from the common man, they have no idea the fear of unpaid bills and loss of home, auto, food, furniture and a mountain of other obligations can drive some people to extreme counter reaction.

Listen.  What’s been asked of us—to live without income for a few months while bills mount; to risk homelessness; to break the economy—it’s just too much.  A real war would be preferable.  At least it comes with combat pay.  Two trillion dollars, an obscene amount, somehow will not be enough to tide over American families for more than one month.  Why can’t they understand that?  Many if not most of the American people would prefer to take their chances and keep working their ‘nonessential’ jobs if it means food on the table, money in the bank and a roof over their heads.  But we’re not allowed that option, because the new virus with no vaccine or cure is so contagious plus our nation of plenty lacks hospitals, medical equipment, beds and trained health professionals to care for the projected hundreds of thousands who soon will get deathly ill.

Listen.  Hear that?  Do you sense it?  Prayers! Voiced and silent, with and without tears.  In every language.  Every person around the world is praying simultaneously for divine intervention, a cure, a quick solution.  Americans are notoriously impatient.  But we’re resourceful, too, and will figure out various means to survive: moving, dropping expenses, begging, borrowing, whatever we gotta do.  Pride has no place in hard times. We’ll find our individual resilience and collective dogged determination to get through this crisis.  Overnight we have been forced to rely on one another, family, friends, neighbors, and our government local and state and federal. The government really has done all it can do to help us.  We have been aware of an insurmountable budget deficit for a long, long time.  We’ve needed to toughen up.  Stiff upper lip.  Come on, now. Crying time’s over.  Re-arrange, reshuffle, toss in the air.

Listen.  What’s the worst they can do?  Kick us out of our homes?  Courts are closed and backlogged for months.  Besides, the President has declared no evictions during this pandemic.  Will they cut off the electricity for lights, gas for heat, water for bathing and life itself, internet in order to work at home and for necessary communication?  Maybe but doubtful.  In the age of social media, cutting power and water from tens of millions of American families unable to pay the bills would be a corporate and municipal public relations disaster.  And if they do cut us off, let us reclaim the intestinal fortitude of our backwoods ancestry who built this country.  Portable toilets if we have to.  Bread, water and canned food if that’s all we can scrounge up.  Candles and matches and flashlights to see at night.  Tents and towels for shelter.  Live along rivers, lakes and creeks if need be.  When there’s a will, there’s a way.  Besides the hard times are supposed to be temporary, extremely temporary.  Sleep on it, sleep in shifts, and ask for help: Salvation Army, major churches, food pantries and all the other nonprofits providing sustenance and relief.  The TV ads proclaim “We’re all in this together.”  Let ’em prove it.      

Listen.

Breathe.  Feel.  Observe.  Hear.  Taste.  Touch.  Think.  Read.  Watch.  Work.  Rest.  Walk.

At this moment we’re alive, healthy and aware.  We’re in control more than we realize.  And listen, folks lose their homes every day.  Attachment comes with a price.  Embrace what really matters.

Listen.  This sudden empty time we’ve been given, it’s like a gift.  Isn’t that what we’ve wanted throughout our busy lives, week after week, year after year?  Time to watch children grow and learn and be part of the process.  Time to think.  Time to relax, sit outdoors and watch each day as nature blooms fresh with beauty, contently swaying gently in the breeze, happy just to be alive … again.  As we gaze upon nature, our thoughts turn inward.  Before the crash, were any of us really happy, rushing through the work week, feeling tired all the time, tense about money because there was never enough and now none?  Instead, we’re left with this priceless commodity, an unexpected intangible present because Someone somewhere thought we needed it now.  Soon enough, we’ll never have this gift again—time to change our lives for the better.