Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

(Nervous throat clearing) There was a time when I knew all the Woody Allen movies.  I have fond memories and have had a great many laughs from watching his golden period of comedy productions: “Play it again, Sam,” “Take the Money and Run,” “Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex,” “Love & Death,” “Sleeper,” “Annie Hall,” “Manhattan,” “Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy,” “Stardust Memories,” “Purple Rose of Cairo,” “Zelig,” “Hannah and her Sisters” “Radio Days,” “Alice,” “Mighty Aphrodite” and “Bullets Over Broadway.”  Quite an outstanding late 20^th century film repertoire, with homages to his beloved New York City in color and black and white, the music of Porter and Gershwin, and lots of witty jokes about s-e-x and his personal favorite musing and lifelong fear, death—the last two subjects the only things he believes in to paraphrase his character’s last line in “Sleeper.”  Come on, I was hardly alone in perceiving the little guy as a comedy genius, not necessarily sexy yet his movies afterwards seemed to cast a spell of lovemaking.

Before I knew anything about Woody Allen, other than his trademark unattractive black frame glasses and nervous comedy bits, there was a TV game show featuring a trio of celebrity couples.  In “Tattletales” the wives would answer questions, and their husbands guessed the answers then vice versa.  In a circa 1981 episode, the question for the ladies was “Who would you rather sleep with: Ronald Reagan or Woody Allen?”  The women, all seasoned actresses, answered hands down “Woody Allen.”  At the time, I could not fathom the two choices.

Reluctantly I’ve been watching HBO’s “Allen v Farrow” (an ironic title since it seems to be the other way around).  So now I’m confronted when recalling Allen’s movies with the mind of a much older woman and through the prerequisite 21^st century MeToo gaze.  There’s even a sick feeling when hearing a film expert, a former fan who purposely and thoroughly studied Allen’s body of work including nonpublished manuscripts, submits that the filmmaker habitually wrote about a young woman or a much younger female in love with or sheepishly pursuing Allen or an older man.  Guess Allen didn’t realize he couldn’t play 30 or 40 the rest of his life and get away with love scenes with women in their 20s, college girls, or like in “Manhattan” a high school student played then by 16-year-old Mariel Hemingway.

Casting perspective on a generation

When I first heard about the ugly ‘p’ word associated with Allen by his former lover and leading actress Mia Farrow, I didn’t know what to think.  The ‘p’ word became public rumor right after Farrow inadvertently discovered Allen was having an affair with her adopted teen-age daughter.  Farrow and Allen never lived together but kept separate New York apartments, not unlike ‘free floating life rafts’ to paraphrase a line by Allen in “Annie Hall,” which is said because his character did not want to live with his girlfriend Annie but wanted to continue their adult relationship while living separately.  The implication was Allen’s character, twice divorced like the actor in real life, was immature.

The ‘p’ bomb was dropped by Farrow regarding another adopted baby that Allen agreed to father.  The allegations are he had an ‘intense’ relationship with this one child, a curly haired baby girl.  Somehow in their unusually close relationship, allegedly a line was crossed—and there are witnesses including the now grown daughter herself.  She is adamant Allen on more than one occasion sexually abused her when she was a little girl.  Allen’s team of lawyers countered that the allegations were coached by Farrow in revenge for his admitted affair with her teenage daughter.

Someone bring me a martini, to paraphrase another classic Woody Allen movie line in response to a sordid romantic triangle in which his character finds himself.

The news died down when Allen was never charged with a crime, which it appears the HBO doc is implying should have occurred.  But the investigation was in the early 1990s.  We’re a more woke generation now in 2021.  We think we’re real, can see the ugly truth in everything, have reached the Age of No BS.

Still.  Like millions of former and closet Woody Allen fans, I do not know him.  There was a time I thought I’d come close to meeting him.  I was in NYC in December 1991 and planned to go to Michael’s Pub where I heard he played clarinet.  I called and found he plays on Monday nights, and I was there on a weekend.  Nevertheless, I shot pictures of the Big Apple in black and white film because of Woody Allen.  Two collages of pictures remain on my bathroom walls, perhaps exactly where they belong.

Through the years, I’ve occasionally caught an Allen movie on TCM usually around Oscar season or when they do a tribute to New York City or an era of fine comedy writers.  After all, Allen wrote for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” along with Mel Brooks and Neil Simon.  And like other fans, I admire the film work of art and comedy … but quietly ponder if Allen is just a dirty old man and should have gone to prison.

The Beautiful People   

When the story came out about his romance with Soon-Yi Previn, Farrow’s adopted teen daughter, any fan would think of “Manhattan.”  In the movie, his 40-something character wrestles with dating a high school girl.  With her fresh young face and girlish voice, she tells him she thinks she’s in love with him.  They have a chemistry, many things in common, as if she is more mature than her high school age and even wise beyond her years.  Yet he knows this relationship is, well, wrong.  He breaks up with her to date someone his age, but then that woman dumps him.  As creative therapy, his character records a list of things he loves.  The last thing he says to himself is the face of his former too-young girlfriend.  He thinks he screwed up dumping her and literally runs to get her back.  But it’s too late, and he has to accept it.

I also thought about other love interests in Allen’s movies and how their figures have always been slim and their appearance waifish.  In armchair psychoanalysis, I wonder if the writer is attracted to younger females, those who are not yet womanly in shape, have yet if ever developed a figure that says across the screen “Va-va-va-voom!  Now here’s a grown woman, no doubt about it.”  Mia Farrow and Diane Keaton, two of his co-stars and his former real-life girlfriends, were slim and trim and able to play younger women, not girls, for a couple of decades in Woody Allen movies.

The MeToo movement asks us to ignore the other side of an age-old story: Sometimes a young female thinks she’s in love with or, if more secure than insecure, goes after an older male.  Like it or not, this relationship (that we used to think was none of our business) has not only been the subject of art for centuries, it’s also common in life and coupling.  There is an age when a man should not date or pursue a female.  There is right and wrong, and the law makes it clear age wise.  But men have gone after younger females way before “Peyton Place.”  We even had a President who on more than one occasion dumped his aging wife for a younger model.  Men who can do.

Are we going to banish everyone who had anything to do with the older man and the younger female in real life and in works of fiction?  That would include Harrison Ford now and the director Stephen Spielberg.  Remember that scene in “Indiana Jones” where during one of Dr. Jones’ college lectures on anthropology, a female student bats her eyes closed with the legible words “Love You” painted on the lids?  Then there’s the storyline about Jones and his former dalliance with the daughter of a colleague.  The two former lovers meet up some years later in Nepal where she is still angry at him, telling him what he did was wrong and he knew it because she was just a child.  And Mr. Man tells her she knew what she was doing.  She wants an apology, and he apologizes.  Then she pushes for more remorse, and a put-out Indiana Jones responds he can say he’s sorry only so much.  The movie has a happy ending in that the two sorta get together, and we learn in a sequel made decades later they had a son.

It’s just so hard for me and maybe others to believe Woody Allen, the little weasel whose comedy centered on sex and romantic relationships, is a pedophile.  Then again, throughout his celebrity he notoriously shunned interviews and maintained a very private life.  What could have been his reason?  In his movies, his characters always make clear his disdain for the pretension of show business.

In the end Allen married Soon-Yi. They have been married a few decades and raised kids.  The couple lives and travels together as husband and wife.  They have indeed grown old together, contrary to the early Woody Allen movies when his characters doubted such a normal life possible because he was too neurotic.  Whether their love is real or their marriage a ploy to kill rumors about alleged depravity remains unknown.  Because none of us knows this man or any of these people.  Allen insists even in his end-of-life memoir that this girl Soon-Yi entered his life and eventually there was an attraction.  When all of this was blowing up in his face and nobody could believe the legendary Woody Allen was really in love with such a young girl who had absolutely nothing in common with him, having been a poor orphan across the world, he replied pitifully, “The heart wants what it wants.”

Somebody cue September Song—because that’s what I hear whenever reminiscing about a Woody Allen movie.  

After faithfully masking in public for a year now—well, now, ’cause we had to—Texans have been told it’s no longer mandated across the state.  “Yahoo!” was my first giddy reaction.  Then I started thinkin’ on it.  The news indicates Texas’ stats on the virus and related deaths are not coming down in an astounding turnabout of good luck.  And, yes, every day now many in droves are getting the vaccine including yours truly.  After my first dose, I was overwhelmed by a renewed sense of optimism, like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I mean, PTL!  But I’ve never been one to separate modern medicine and religious faith.  They go hand in hand in my book.

The line for the vaccine, however, was unexpectedly long with hardly anyone paying attention to social distance markers except for me.  And then people actually butted in line, yes breaking right ahead of me.  They knew well I was there first, and still anxious individuals and couples just broke in line.  I must look like a push over, and I am to some extent but within seconds knew the score and toughened up with a look that said, “Try it, punk.”  The punks were senior citizens.  It was like everyone for himself, full panic mode.  And we were in line to get the long-awaited presumed life-saving societal normalizing VACCINE.

Walk the line

After slowly moving through the ever-expanding outdoor line to the hospital, still with newcomers darting in and out and breaking in front of attendants indoors who obviously avoided verbal altercation, it was my turn.  I showed my ID, got my temperature checked and met all the other screening questions.  Cleared, I was told to go to the gold elevators.  This must be like heaven.

No, just more winding lines upstairs.  The halls were lined with chairs where people waited ten minutes after their shot.  The shot room was large with maybe twenty stations where nurses screened us some more and went into detail about side effects and asked about allergies.  The shot was quick and painless.  I quickly removed myself from the crowded room and found an empty chair to wait any quick reactions.  Nada.  I left the overcrowded hospital doing its part to vaccine millions of Texans.  I don’t look forward to dealing with rude people when I return for my second dose.

So when the Governor proclaimed out of nowhere that Texas was removing the mask mandate, I wondered why.  Immediately came the counter: He did it to make us all happy and forget about the February deadly winter storm debacle.  Millions were out of heat, out of electricity and then out of water and facing insurmountable water damage from busted pipes.  What a multi-billion-dollar mess for state and local government not to mention our various electric businesses and of course the tens of thousands of Texans.

Behind the mask

We’re all thrilled down here in Texas to be told we don’t have to wear a mask if we don’t want to, that it should be an individual decision and certainly up to each individual business.  Right away, I noticed the list of mega stores like Target insisting the mask mandate would stick at least with employees.  I awaited Walmart, but they followed suit, too, and require masks.  Seems Big Business just yet will not ‘throw caution to the wind,’ shall we say?  Even major city mayors quickly countered the state’s no-mask mandate with a city mask mandate and public buildings’ mandate.  All right, already.

The thought of suddenly being mask free left me with mixed feelings.  I mean, the end is near, which is great, better than we were just a month ago.  We now know there will come a time perhaps even this year that we won’t have to wear masks everywhere we go.  For the most part, we don’t wear masks at home, in our cars, visiting relatives or anyone else indoors, and many of us never stopped going to restaurants and didn’t wear masks while eating with strangers though somewhat socially distanced.

Wearing a mask eight to nine hours a day at work taught me I cannot stand it and am so happy I didn’t go into the medical profession.  Wearing the mask has almost become a habit, basically a forced routine that even now I tend to forget and have to remind myself to mask up before entering public places.  I’ve kept a bag of fresh masks at work, in my car, a few in my purse.  I don’t wear it unless I absolutely have to.  And at work and just about anywhere I go, I’ll still have to wear a mask until further notice.

I thought after my second shot, I definitely wouldn’t need to wear the mask.  After all, the vaccine is about ensuring I don’t get the virus, not me protecting others from getting sick.  Like the flu shot, it’s about protecting me not others.  But lo and behold, medical scientists who know more about this stuff than the rest of us urge us to continue wearing the damn mask even after vaccinated.  It’s about ensuring that others don’t get sick and die from Covid-19.

Throughout this ordeal, I could not wait until we never have to wear masks again.  They itch and make my nose run.  I frequently lower it to drink water.  The mask fogs my glasses.  I CANNOT SEE.  I cannot breathe.  In the early months, my complexion was ruined from sweat around the chin and mouth.  I learned to change masks frequently, not unlike a diaper, because of sweat and stinky breath.  Along with lots of medical-grade breath mints, I keep disposable facial cleansing clothes at work to wipe my face before putting on my second mask for the day.  I guess I go through three to five masks daily during the work week.  This is so … stupid.  We’re in the most modern age of mankind … and still when it comes to a pandemic, we’re no better off than our grandparents in 1918 or our European ancestors who survived the much more gruesome Black Plague in the Middle Ages.

When we are for real told to ditch the masks, I wonder how hard it will be.  We still remember vividly our previous carefree lives: of hugs and kisses; concerts and travel; shaking hands when greeting or meeting someone new; touching one another lightly just for encouragement, just to let people know and feel our care for them.  Our emotional and spiritual connection with one another has been broken during the pandemic.

We are humans.  We are emotional beings.  We are not rational at our core.  Our heart is our core.  To feel is our essence.  Life used to be about experiencing and feeling everything.  Instead, we’ve been emotionally stunted—for kids struggling to learn online, intellectually stunted, too.  We like to think we are smarter than our emotional selves, but there is no telling what a year or two of mask wearing will do to us psychologically, especially the young ones.

Will we easily be able to put these days of masks and oddness behind us?  I work where no one has seen me maskless except online.  Guess I’m feeling shy.  I’ll have to start lining my lips again and wear lipstick and powder my face—routines I dropped a year ago when figuring out the mask interferes with pride in appearance.  The mask allowed a casualness that is appealing to some.  But when the masks finally come off for good—when we are assured by medical scientists it’s OK to go bare faced, as God intended—first let us take a deep cleansing breath.  And let us never take life on earth for granted again.

Not sure if it’s karma points or what, but so far in my home the power and heat have remained steady during this worst cold snap in modern Texas history.  Not that I haven’t experienced power outages, most during the spring and summer and a few during some cold nights.  Seems what starts it here is a thunderstorm, then poof!  Lights out.  In the dark I call the power company apparently directed by a robot with a female voice that knows my locale and usually confirms the power is indeed out in my neck of the woods.  Sometimes I get a restoration estimate of three or four hours.  Sometimes they don’t know when the power will be restored.  Having experienced no electricity in hot and cold weather, I guess I’d take the summer outages.  But there’s no sleep in either.  And when it’s pitch black in the house with no battery radio for entertainment and the need to conserve battery flashlights, sleep is it, like preparing for the coffin.

Texas again is an international laughingstock.  This time due to millions of folks being without electricity and heat when temperatures are in the single digits and the windshield below 0.  Hell no!  Don’t sound like Texas a’tall.  Texans have taken to social media (powered up by their automobiles) to rant with unprecedented rage about this going on for days now.  Schools are closed, not even attempting virtual learning as so many homes sporadically are out of electricity, and then there are the homeowners and apartment dwellers having to contend with the watery mess from busted pipes.  Plumbers are taking a hundred calls a day.

Texans don’t do winter well.

And apparently neither does our state government.  We’ve heard blame passed around to everyone except the Almighty.  The green deal caused this?  Governor, please.  This is more about power companies not winterizing—like they were supposed to after the big 2011 February freeze that spoiled our brand new boasted Super Bowl stadium and kept schools closed for a week due to thick icy roads.  That winter, no one dared drive around except for the Cheeseheads from Wisconsin who chuckled at our wintry conditions.  “What snow?” they said, laughing at us.

No, this lingering power outage is due to the usual culprit: corporate greed.   Passing the blame, of course they claim we Texas customers would not accept overall higher utilities for the extremely rare winter cold snap.  If you look at the Texas year, we spend a lot more time complaining about the excessive heat than the almost forgotten freezing rain and icy cold.  The suits have a point.  One time a utility company, playing good corporate citizen, waived electric bills for poor families throughout a very hot summer.  The company set October for the month when they’d come collecting.  Ha, October in Texas is like July in Wisconsin.  We usually keep our ACs running to keep cool because we’re still hot without it.  I knew the suit thinking October is the time the heat would be gone was from the north.

Freezin’ East Texas

The reason I bring up karma for spending a comfortable winter so far (knock on wood with frequent audible praises to God) is because I have spent some miserable winters in East Texas.  The worst was December 1983 to January 1984.  My car wouldn’t start.  I thought the engine block had cracked, something I heard was common up north.  An all-electric apartment where I lived circulated ice-cold air.  Then the power was out in the region for days.  In another place I stayed, the pipes froze.  I was in college and learning how to rough it in 0-degree weather.  It was 0, sometimes 2, on a warm day 7.  I learned to double and triple clothing layers including socks and wear long johns under my jeans, T-shirts with flannel shirts.  I did without bathing for a week or so and each night slept under mounds of blankets and quilts while keeping burners on from a gas stove, the only source of heat.

The funny part is, the next year in Texas I wore shorts while cooking a turkey.  Texas weather, if you don’t like it, wait a minute.  Then compare the same time year by year for lots of laughs.

Anyone remember Thanksgiving 1993 in Dallas?  I was staying with my parents for my first vacation from a reporter job in northeast Texas.  On Thanksgiving around noon as my mother and I drove out for a home-cooked meal with her sister, the snow fell, and the roads were slick.  Driving back was more hazardous.  I parked my truck, saw the Dallas snowstorm made national network news, then for days could not move my vehicle to go shopping and have fun.  The truck was stuck, as if welded by ice to a concrete driveway.  The ice would not melt.  I waited, day by day, going stir crazy as my vacation plans in the big city were ruined.  Then on my last day, my mother and I poured lots of buckets of water all around the truck tires.  I turned on the vehicle to heat ’er up, put the gear in reverse, and nothin’ doin’.  We continued our chain of bucket water until finally the truck would move in reverse.  I floored it and drove the hell out of there, waving at mother in the mirror.  I was so angry about a spoiled vacation, especially when I saw the roads were for the most part passable, that I stopped by a mall that had a New York Museum of Modern Art shop and purchased something I always wanted: a display of perfectly round polished crystals and rocks, each with its own tiny label.  It’s a game created by someone in exile during the rule of Napoleon, kind of a solitaire Chinese checkers.  It’s still on display in my home.  Whenever I dust, I hardly ever think of the wintry reason I got it, a symbol of survival.

Another miserable freezing winter lasted one whole week, again in an all-electric apartment, with no electricity and therefore no heat in northeast Texas January 2001.  Folks who lived in the country were out of electricity for two long weeks.  As a government news reporter, during the big freeze I’d drive out every morning to the water treatment plant and see what was going on.  The streets were fine for driving.  It’s just no one had electricity including businesses and restaurants.  Back at the news desk, where power was out a day or two but otherwise restored, I’d call the electric company that covered the region.  The problem with lingering power outages spanned Sherman to Tyler.  I lived right in between.  A few readers would drop by, telling me they’d lived in states like Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin for 30 years or so and never experienced a power outage for more than a few hours, never days on end.  They hinted something else must be going on.  No, I believed what the power company said.  I understood Texas doesn’t know how to deal with severe cold … and doesn’t care to.

Some areas were restored power but not where I lived.  Each night as I came home, the neighborhood was eerily empty.  No lights.  No cars.  Everyone had left for heated shelter except me.  I’d use a large flashlight to get around inside.  Wasn’t sure what to do with the food in the fridge.  Brought some to work each day to microwave for lunch and then ate dinner there, too, before ruefully having to head home.  Couldn’t take a shower.  The water was ice cold.  Then I’d crawl into bed, still wearing socks and pants and a long-sleeved shirt, laying under every blanket, quilt and bed covering I had.  I counted 10 layers.  During the big freeze while I cried under the covers because breathing in the cold air hurt my lungs, my friend Jean called to tell me about the 2000 election verdict with Al Gore conceding.  I told her about my fate, trying to keep warm in a cold no-heat apartment.  I told her about daily calling the power company officials.  They explained the weather has to get above freezing for the crews to successfully ‘sweep’ ice off the lines.  The official maintained crews were sweeping lines every day, but the temperatures were just too cold, and the lines would freeze again and power couldn’t be restored.  There also were tons of trees that had fallen throughout the entire East Texas region that impacted service.

Cold feet, warm heart

It was colder inside my apartment than outdoors.  My teeth chattered uncontrollably.  Within five minutes, I felt the cold all the way to the marrow of my bones.  My organs ached.  I was developing a bad cough that would turn into a long bout of bronchitis.

Midweek a friend whose home had electricity offered showers and food.  I brought towels, a change of clothes, shampoo and my blow dryer, and was so grateful.

A couple more days went by.  Under the covers, I’d punch out a tent to breathe and prayed all the time for the miracle of electric heat to return.  I cried myself to sleep, it was so miserable.  In such situations I think of those who lived in concentration camps and wondered how they did it, how they survived.  I think of my parents and grandparents and their childhoods without electricity and heat other than a potbelly stove.  They really lived the lives of frontier families until electricity was provided nationwide and lastly in the poorest areas of rural America.  The thoughts didn’t warm my heart, just made me mad that people have to endure such deadly weather elements year after year.  We’re used to being in control.

But throughout all my self pity at having no power, no heat or cool air depending on the time of year, I knew the power would be restored.  This was not permanent, not meant to be intentional as it was for prisoners of war.  In Texas frigid temperatures are soon gone, even forgotten as we compare it to the miserable heat, and this is why energy providers skimped on effectively winterizing the all-important massive power grid supplying exclusively the Lone Star State.  Texans come from a proud heritage of living off the land and sitting tight during days of extreme cold or months of extreme heat.  It’s what we do down here: We deal with very bad situations and for the most part live through them, survive them, don’t think about ’em … till the next time which in terms of Texas winter weather could be decades.

Finally after one entire week of living in the coldest abode of my life, I returned home for a quick lunch and found my living room light on and the TV.  My heart was overjoyed.  Yet I was cautious—like those concentration camp survivors at the end of the war when all the guards were gone. I thought this might be a trick, and the power would go out again.  It’s happened before.  I had to make myself take in a breath.  Life was continuing, no longer frozen still.  I laughed and hooped and thanked God for the power now heating and lighting my home.  I fixed a sandwich and almost choked when realizing the only channel available was “Jerry Springer” with the topic “You’re too fat to do porn!”

I never watched his show and turned off the TV, preferring silence.  At least it was my choice.  I turned on all faucets to check for any damage.  All was well.  I did a load of laundry.  Life was instantly back to normal especially in my home.  During the power outage, I had put together a large puzzle by candlelight.  I spent a couple hours a night finishing the puzzle.  It kept me occupied.  It is Flowers by Andy Warhol.  Each of the four flowers are a different color, colors I remember fondly from my childhood: red, hot pink, orange and yellow.  The image is fun, but putting each small piece together was difficult, more so in shadows.  I organized piles based on color including the green/black for the grass.  At the time while working the puzzle, I was aware it kept my mind off the cold temperatures as each hour I thought surely the power would return.  Perhaps subconsciously I worked that specific puzzle, with nothing but close-up flowers, to assure myself of the seasons to come, that winter passes like time, and that it comes around—less in Texas than anywhere else—to force all humanity to stop … and appreciate our blessings and know we’re not alone or forsaken.

It starts with the truth. 

What we know.  What we think we know.  What we believe to be true.  What we believe to be untrue.  What our gut instinct tells us.  Truth can be an individual matter or a mass reasoning. 

Now to all that intellectual understanding necessary to determine the truth, add the terms misinformation and disinformation, both purposeful untruths, a manipulation of facts or a set of ‘alternative facts.’ 

Then play on human emotions—our knee-jerk reactions and unreasonable notions and inclinations based on how, when and where we were raised coupled with religious teachings and culture—and ta-da!  Today we have dozens of truths from which to choose … instead of just the one and only truth. 

The truth used to be called the news.  But even the mass media is suspect today, as it always has been centuries prior to the internet.  Just not so blatantly disbelieved, ignored, doubted and questioned by every kind of person as it is today.   

Where do we as U.S. citizens go for news each morning when we awake and at night before bed—that is the question. 

And that’s the way it was 

The news used to be unquestioned especially by Mr. and Mrs. America.  In the days of Walter Cronkite and Harry Reasoner and early network TV, old-school newspaper reporters were the logical hires to sit in front of a camera at 6 p.m. Eastern Time and recite the most important events of the day albeit succinctly.  The weathered face of newsmen, most who were involved in World War II, were as trusting as our fathers and honest in their reporting.  They got their facts straight.  The public had no reason to doubt the news.  

The proof was it was true. 

But after the Kennedy assassination, the turbulent 1960s, the Vietnam War, assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and another Kennedy, FBI investigations, then Watergate—most Americans grew up in a post-truth era.  We learned then to not trust our government and even the news whether network or local, big city or small town. 

Yet through the decades, the news has rarely been inaccurate. 

Why is that?  First, journalism is the search for truth.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  The worst thing that could happen to a news business is to publicize untruth.  There are laws, too, that news institutions must adhere, one being libel, the other slander.  And any false or misleading or even an accidental oversight of facts requires a retraction.  How many of those have we seen lately, in the past 20 or 30 years?  There are corrections, and even those are rare, but not retractions which must follow untruth printed or broadcasted in and by a news business. 

Fake news comes from the mix of entertainment with news.  Since the advent of the Worldwide Web, there are so many ‘news’ sources.  Some websites are the legitimate news business such as The News York Times, CNN and The Washington Post.  The majority of online news sources are not intended to be any more than entertainment.  They cannot be relied upon as providers of truth. 

The consumer must decide what so-called news source is providing truth from the many providing entertainment and therefore can play fast and loose with the facts—and if online are not penalized for libel or slander let alone lies and half-truths that can incite and enrage the public and as we clearly see can cause harm and murder.  

Will the real news please stand up? 

A real news business will be a member of the Associated Press.  The AP, which began in the 1840s by several newspapers, is a nonprofit organization.  A news organization’s membership in the AP means several things, the most important being: The media organization is first a serious provider of news and adheres to journalism integrity.  And if a news organization does not adhere to news integrity, it cannot be a member of the AP. 

Real news stories for print and broadcast will include the who, what, when, where, why, which and how.  Facts must be substantiated from at least three different sources, preferably more, but not just one source.  Those sources when human, as opposed to a document or report, must be verifiable.  Rumor and hearsay are not news.  A professional journalist will check the background of anyone providing information which will be used in a news report. 

So now we can see why so many consumers of news are essentially bored.  The news is news, usually reported the exact same way by cable, network, radio and print.   

When news presentations started mixing opinion and political or social angles, that’s when the public lost trust.  The news was supposed to be just the facts.  Newspapers carried opinion from columnists to editorial boards and letters to the editor.  The ‘full package’ or full spectrum of covering and presenting the news from all angles was a tradition in a newspaper.  But broadcast news, especially radio, had more time to fill.  And cable news had practically 23 hours to do something.  Cable news’ national beat reporters were brought in to talk about the news and maybe dish.  In the public’s mind, the career of journalist morphed into a celebrity role. 

And Americans love celebrities, trust ’em as good for their word. 

Our press is free, which means the government does not control the news.  But freedom of the press never meant the news could be untrue, half-true or exaggerated.  No, the daily news when presented accurately is just the simple facts.  That can be quite boring for today’s Americans so in need of escaping mundane lives—or a misperceived pointless existence. 

With all that has gone wrong in online media, Americans must avoid the glitz and wowness of news-as-entertainment.  Anyone who cares about the truth in news must first seek and ensure news organizations that are bona fide, the ones that do not play fast and loose with the facts but instead verify information and substantiate sources and facts.  The truth has always been out there. 

Child of Satan, Child of God is the self-titled auto biography of Susan Atkins, AKA Sadie Mae Glutz, infamous member of the Manson Family.  From a California women’s prison in the 1970s where she would spend the rest of her life for the Tate-La Bianca murders, she tells her story of growing up middle class post WWII in a suburb.  Her father was the bread winner.  She had siblings.  But her mother was terminally ill, dying when Susan was a teen-ager.  Her father took to drinking to numb his sorrow.  He wasn’t interested in being a strong loving father and guiding his offspring through a difficult and unfair situation.  Her family disintegrated.

Susan left home early to become a secretary, experimented with drugs, worked as a stripper—a dancing job she enjoyed as the center of attention.  In the late 1960s, she met Charlie one day at a hippie party.  He was playing a mesmerizing folk-jazz guitar and singing his soft version of a beautiful pop ballad of the day.  Susan was enthralled, allowing herself to become seduced by this man, a decade older and a dangerous manipulative ex-con.  She didn’t see that or even think of it, being barely out of high school.  With groovy clothes, long hair, beard and moustache, he made a solid impression on Susan—and the looks and talent turned out to work on numerous girls the same age with similar back stories of uptight middle-class boredom and ’60s rebellion.  Charlie was cool when parents were not.  He got it.  He had all the answers. He spoke the language of youth.  In prison he had studied the Beatles, Eastern religion and mysticism, and the Dale Carnegie program of winning friends and influencing people.

Timing more than anything else brought Manson and the flower children together.  Living with Manson meant lots of LSD trips.  Drugs were more important than sustenance.  Sex also was part of the deal.  This was a commune that would not tolerate squares.  But like all cults, the Manson Family had their charismatic leader, succumbed to total mind control, cut ties to family and former friends, literally had no money, and eventually lost track of time as was the intention by Manson who controlled the kids like puppets on a string.  He broke down their will.  They allowed him to break down their will.  And like so many modern American cults, death and murder would be the ultimate sacrifice and offering to show total allegiance to Manson—no questions asked.

Society in the early 1970s got a daily televised dose of the girls on trial for murder and how they acted when arriving to court and even in the court room.  They laughed, sang songs, did whatever Charlie wanted.  They stood up one day and in unison proclaimed: “The judge is the lady.”  When Charlie shaved his head and burnt an X on his forehead, so did the girls and all his followers outside the courthouse.  Toward the end of the trial, as Charlie spoke in his defense about how he took in the kids nobody wanted (?), fed ’em (he taught them to steal and dumpster dive for food), he outstretched his arms as in the manner of Christ on the cross.  The girls wept and cried and then went into hysterics shouting devotions of everlasting love to Charlie. 

In her book, Susan pins the Tate murders on Tex Watson and doesn’t go into detail about her antics during the trial.  However, sober and mature, she wondered why no one saw how sick they were.  They were young people fed a steady diet of mind-altering drugs with little food, no vitamins, pale, thin, VD infected … Instead, society took them for the glaring angry counterculture image the Manson Family portrayed and judged them harshly.

The Family did commit murder—the most gruesome senseless brutal butchery in Hollywood history.  The beautiful young actress Sharon Tate was eight months pregnant.  What they did was unspeakable—unthinkable, until the Manson Family brought the scenario into our minds.  They scared everybody to death.

Susan looked back at her wasted youth and wondered why no adults came to their aid or noticed these were sick kids, mentally and physically and spiritually.  In prison Susan takes the teachings of Christ to heart and becomes Born Again.

If it looks like a cult and acts like a cult

What is it about Americans and cults?  We’re both fascinated and repulsed by them: the idea of a single man controlling a number of people, usually idealistic youth.  We all know the game: the charismatic man claims to have an ‘in’ with God or the ‘Truth’ which includes an end time or end game of sorts when the world will see the cult leader is right and everyone else foolishly ignorant and damned, more and more people start listening to his long-winded yet seemingly passionate speeches, donate to his cause, start hanging out with followers while dropping former friends and family unless they all get involved as well.

And always, always, cults end in death and murder.  Jim Jones portrayed all of the characteristics of cult leader right down to the trademark shades to hide constant drug abuse necessary to stay ‘on’ all the time.  When the world was closing in on breaking up his family of 900+ in Jonestown, he directed a shocking mass suicide, something followers had rehearsed often and certainly expected.  Finally it was for real.

Cults are such a fascination in this country that there are TV series dedicated to the subject, profiling the leader and surviving followers, all the juicy sexy goings on, brutality in ‘other’ thought or action, and then murder.  The difference in cults today is they are even easier to get into with the internet and most recently the economic downturn and human isolation.

Do you know that the rest of the world, countries much older and having survived centuries of wars, think Americans are the eternal optimists?  America is about moving forward.  It’s about living in the future not the past.  It’s about making something of yourself.  It’s rarely about hanging onto a proud thousand-year history that binds us together.  That is because half of Americans are relatively newcomers, have no family heritage in this land dating back to the 17^th century.

Cults provide a deep bond with a leader who ‘gets through’ to people whether a large or small group.  Manson knew how to manipulate his followers and picked the few who would kill for him.  After all, he was the only one who had an axe to grind with Terry Melcher, the record producer who snubbed Manson’s rock star dreams and who owned the house where the Tate murders occurred.

The DC Capitol mob attack was bound to happen.  Like the Manson Family and the People’s Temple, timing brought all the elements together for a cult who would be groomed to murder for their leader.  Tens of thousands of Americans today have allowed themselves to replace religion with politics.  Along with the towering popularity of Fox News and their brand of fast & loose journalism and a slogan that boasted “you decide,” we’ve become a splintered society even more so with a plethora of alternative news internet sites promoting a revolution (another Manson/Jones/Trump spiel) and then there’s QAnon created by God only knows.  [My guess is the Russians.]  For thousands of disenfranchised, distrusting, disillusioned Americans, all the alt-right conspiracy theories just make sense.  Please read the attached link below on the political cult that has definitely evolved in 21st century America.  Susan Atkins was right: Cult members are sick.  And society must intervene somehow some way … because cults always think alike and culminate in disaster.            

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/you-evolving/202011/can-trumps-followers-be-called-cult

Don’t get me wrong.  I am excited about the prospect of Joe Biden serving as the next U.S. President, and even more so for Kamala Harris as our first woman VP.  But … since the DC Trumper mob, I was thinking maybe if the greatest position in the land, formerly called the Leader of the Free World, was replaced or retooled, some of the anger would die down.

Anybody?  Thoughts?

Seemed worth pondering considering Trumpers have shown themselves as killers and cultists.  Their insurrection drew thousands of Americans who selfied their way into the U.S. Capitol and, violating police orders, absolutely took over.  Didn’t look like they had any plans to seriously declare themselves the New America.  By their own videos, they mostly roamed around, having no idea where to go to ‘stop the steal.’  Looked like the only real plan they had was to hang U.S. legislators, VP Pence and especially their favorite punching bag Speaker Pelosi. 

Look, it seemed after four exhausting years of chaotic Trumpian rule, whereby we didn’t have a President no how, and if his devotees are willing to kill to keep him in office—well, the U.S. Presidency no longer serves a useful purpose.  Trump did everything in his ‘power’ to destroy democracy.  Our country was not made great or better but has ended up bad and worse, the worst we’ve been in our lifetime.  One of the first things Biden will have to do is repair our nation’s image and standing in the world, leading us out of the pandemic in which we all find ourselves suffering through so very slowly, hardly reassured by our leader.

And with all those Trumpers ensuring Biden won’t be inaugurated President, plus their sexist-racist hatred toward Kamala Harris ever gaining the title, seems like maybe we should think along the same lines as baby Trump, no doubt holding his breath and fuming: “If I can’t be President, no one will!”

Grow up

Guess it would take an act of Congress to change the Constitution and do away with the Executive branch—or maybe tweak it a bit to be held collectively by the longest serving senators and representatives, perhaps five or nine.  That might rearrange the Speaker, majority and minority leaders.  Not sure how the whip would fit in.

After ransacking the Capitol, one Trumper said pitifully, “Guess we could form a new government now.”  They realized there’d be no hangings and were bored at the thought of reading mounds of bureaucratic paperwork.  It does take a special person to perform the duties of a U.S. legislator, someone who doesn’t mind reading thick legislation for comprehension.

This kind of stupid attempt at violently overthrowing the government, just to re-install a preferred leader, is why our nation’s Framers debated allowing every American the right to vote.  In that era, many of the Constitutional Framers believed only the educated deserved, and fully understood, the ramifications of such a sobering privilege.  But the debate ended with the Framers allowing all men the right to vote and in so doing determine our country’s fate and future.  Our world’s young democratic government of the United States of America has had a mighty good run.  Looks like modern Americans cannot even make it last 250 years.

Trumpers are made up of a wide array of miserable snots.  There are the white supremacists and meth gangs, alt right media consumers, Q-anons, self-proclaimed conservative Christians, anti-immigrants, anti-government, anti-authority, anti-taxes, racists, bigots, anti-Semites, anti-education, anti-media, anti-Hollywood, anti-abortion, anti-civil rights, Fox-only viewers, internet addicts.  And some, I assume, are good Republicans.  They all have one thing in common: Everyone should believe just exactly like they do.  Wonder when a group this enormous—half the country—will ever realize they don’t agree among themselves?  In fact, each sect probably hates the others.

Yet they allowed themselves to see a ‘leader’ in Donald Trump just because he talked tough, bullied Republican contenders for President, announced himself a Nationalist (white supremacist), merchandized his name all over the world, said he was a very wealthy man, plus had his own major network TV show and was a show biz celebrity.

The largest chunk of Trumpers reside far outside of cities and major metropolitan areas.  The right-wing orchestrated misinformation and disinformation against the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election was more about America’s small town-big city residential divide.  No doubt folks in rural communities talked to everyone around about who they voted for.  And since everyone they knew said “Why, Trump, of course!” that was it.  The election was stolen.  Trump had to have won.  There just ain’t no other way when you see all the pro-Trump counties in red across the U.S. map.  Look at it!

Simmer down, here now.  There is a way Trump did not win.  Comparing America’s major city populations to all the mid-size, small town and rural communities across the country is like comparing … a billion dollars in debt to a trillion dollars in debt.  The latter rivals the number of stars in the sky.  The vote showed Biden won only by seven million.  It was a very tight contest between Republicans and Democrats.  And we don’t have to remind Republicans how the Presidential winner is the one with the most Electoral College votes, just like their wins in 2016 and in 2000, neither a landslide.

America’s divide is much more than Trump and his lies about election fraud and childish inability to concede the election.  Americans are not going to agree on religion, politics, abortion, race, immigration, taxes, the news media and even social media.  We NEVER have come together on these issues.  But Trumpers believed he won so intently they’d storm the U.S. Capitol and search to kill.  Participants committed serious federal crimes with long prison sentences if convicted.

Being American, as I understood it, is to be a little skeptical—not a downright mean cynical pessimistic hard-headed irrational spoiled brat.  Americans should question our government, never blindly believe anything or anyone who is elected to lead our government.  What happened to my America?  Half the nation believes in Trumpism and a convoluted rigged U.S. Presidential election.

Perhaps 21^st century Americans don’t deserve a President anymore.  Trump was the first one who was more arrogant than humbled, more reckless than responsible, indifferent than caring, unfeeling than empathetic, unkind than kind.  He prefers Louis XIV furniture to low-key American.  My point is Trump was never a United States President to begin with.  He ruled like a king.  He never cared to understand the purpose of the modern American Presidency.  Along with his die-hard supporters, perhaps most Americans by now have forgotten the necessary purpose of calm, rational, intelligent wise leadership.

A drive along the backroads of rural Oklahoma and northeast Texas came to mind when watching the insurrection last week.  Planted throughout the landscape were enormous Trump banners and flags boldly waving in the wind.  The election has been over for a few months.  Even so, whether country estate or wood-frame home along the highway, properties maintained 2020 presidential banners and flags, each as large as a van.  These were the same super-sized Trump flags, some with his smiling face, carried by legions of enraged supporters mad as hell about the election and willing to storm our nation’s Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the election won by Joe Biden.  The mob carried a variety of Trump political ad flags, some proclaiming “Trump Nation,” these alongside the Old South’s Confederate Stars & Bars, and a smattering of U.S. flags.

Thousands who showed up to Washington, D.C., midweek represent half the country.  Like all those elected officials diving under their desks then snatched by police to avoid being dragged to the gallows set up with a noose on the front lawn, I was frightened by the murderous intent to overthrow the government.  We who are not like them should be.

This is what democracy looks like

American ignorance has contributed to our current state of fuming division, that and a fat-mouth know-nothing lying braggart.  The 2020 presidential election was not stolen.  Trump did not win; he did not win by a landslide.  Biden won.  What makes me so sure?  The only reason I understand and therefore have faith in American elections is from covering them as a government reporter.  What I learned while doing the job was elections are local.  They are locally controlled, from city to county, state and federal.  On election night I always had a seat in the county clerk’s office.  Alongside me in the office, where votes eventually come in, were both chairs of the county’s Republican and Democrat Parties.  They were there eyeing the process and results for the very reason Trumpers revolted: to ensure no funny business and that their guy or gal wins or loses fair and square.  Across the nation, there must be thousands of party chairs who oversee every county, state and federal election but especially presidential ones and more than ever this last one. 

Typically older Americans operate the polls, and in large cities perhaps there are more minorities than white people are used to seeing in rural areas and small towns.  They are paid a little bit for what they do, often working late into the evening election night.  When the ballot boxes, locked and made of steel back in the day, are brought into the county clerk’s office, the staff checks and verifies figures.  In all good time, winning candidates are announced.

With the evolution to computer voting machines, still it is the job of our nation’s county clerks—all locally elected officials—to validate the vote tallies, check for inaccuracies, ensure accuracy, and announce winners.  Because of the pandemic, before the election many communities and states quickly switched to mail-in ballots to prevent long lines and avoid health risks.  Nothing suspicious in the sudden move to do so, just an arrangement county clerks and all the other local officials assumed the public would understand, support and appreciate.

Fake news

Along with America’s near total ignorance about our own election process, there is the multiverse of news sources, with little distinction between news and views, what is called the mainstream media and what used to be called the alternative media.  There is no secret about the animosity between CNN/ MSNBC/ABC/CBS/NBC and Fox News.  The palpable rivalry is not just about Fox News’ viewer figures that far outrank competitors but really for serious journalists with integrity the way Fox News plays fast and loose with the facts.  That said, throughout Trump’s presidency, national TV news reporters clearly opined negatively about him.  Verbally Trump and the mainstream national media constantly punched each other in the face.  But the same thing went on during Obama’s two terms as President when every action he took was scrutinized by Fox News and Republican guests like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michele Bachmann and even conservative Christian leaders.

Americans were left in the middle—to think for ourselves.  We had to decide what we wanted to watch, which reporters we agreed with, and where we wanted to get our news and hope for the facts. The most loyal viewers of Fox News have been adamant fans of President Trump.  And vice versa for non-Trumpers who stuck with MSM.  The same American divide continued with online mainstream news sources, many often rebuked by Trump either by name or lumped together as “fake news.”    

But social media was and remains far and away from the old timey 20^th century news format of network and cable TV.  Throughout the Trump presidency, the heads of Twitter and Facebook maintained every time Trump told an outlandish lie on social media, he had a constitutional right to free speech.  Irresponsible speech is what caused last week’s deadly insurrection.  For weeks social media posts from Trump and his supporters bragged of a planned violent attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 to stop the U.S. Congress from certifying the 2020 Presidential election.  That day thousands of Americans—egged on by Trump, donning black leather gloves and wool coat—arrived in Washington, D.C., intent on stringing up elected officials as traitors.  Their mission was to ‘take back our country!’—like all of us wanted Trump to continue as President.  Like none of us is capable of thinking for ourselves.

Imagine their dream for our country: life in a Republican regime.  No free speech.  No free thought.  Keep your mouth shut and maybe stay out of prison or a concentration camp.  That’s how citizens live in Russia, China, North Korea, now Hong Kong, some African nations, the Middle East and our neighboring banana republics.  But as we live and breathe this moment, not yet in the U.S.

Epiphany

Exactly what do Trumpers want?  Trump to be President four more years?  Empowerment?  Money?  Tax evasion?  Democrats dead?  No more immigrants?  No more American cities burned and looted?  What are they so mad about that their lives are so awful?  Are they starving, living on the streets, dying, unemployed, falsely imprisoned?  No, from the looks of them at the capitol, they are typically healthy white Americans with good jobs, clothes, cars, money, security and guns.  One rioter yelled at a reporter who asked the cause for violence at the capitol: “You drove me to this!!!!”

No, Trumpers, in their hopped-up fake media-induced need to be cynical, argumentative, overbearing, suspicious, intimidating and violent, chose to believe lies about a rigged American presidential election plus assorted convoluted conspiracy theories.  It is enough to drive a person insane.

Democracy needs two things—besides intelligent citizens—to keep it going: calm rational thought and the truth.  Trump was none of that.  Same for his fans.

The epiphany is Trumpers are a cult.  They believe like a cult.  Now they act like a cult, ready to ‘blow up the system’ as ordered by their leader.  For people like me who want and need to live in reality, truth matters.  Truth is worth dying for, not fakery and phony balogny Trump or any elected official.  We both have something in common, the Trumpers and the rest of us: We understand democracy is an ideal.  Ideals are worth fighting for but not lies, and believing the election was rigged and stolen from Trump, of all people, is a big fat lie.

Good rrrrrrriddance 2020!!!  Am I right?  Wasn’t this just the worst year of our lives?  The new virus, the pandemic, the masks, sanitizer, hand washings, ‘social’ distancing, school closings, toilet paper shortages, grocery store runs, mandatory shutdowns, mass unemployment, two-week quarantines, hospitalizations, culminating in nick-of-time vaccines … and with all that precaution, still so many deaths?  Earlier in the year when we were learning about the novel coronavirus in New York City, Texans including yours truly thought such tragedy could never happen here because we’re spread out with lots of land, unlike cramped, stacked tiny NYC.  By year’s end, Texas now ranks first in Covid-19 cases and second in Covid-19 deaths, right behind New York.

The whole situation seems so … unnecessary, like it could have been prevented, at least cut short from spreading worldwide.  Yet history tells us humanity has lived through many plagues, most more gruesome and deadly than our novel coronavirus and certainly without the comparably comfortable modern hospitals, medical procedures and medications.  It’s just that this being the high-tech 21^st century, where our sights were more in outer space than back here on earth, we thought plagues were a thing of the past.  With our space-age bio science and vaccines, surely modern man could ward off a new bug.  Were we so wrong!  And by we, I mean those of us most fortunate to live in the First World.  This kind of panic, pandemonium, and inability to control the spread of a new disease is common in Third World countries, not the awesomely powerful ‘We’re Number One’ USA.  Americans thought we had become immune to pandemics.

A pox on all our houses

Some blame China for not telling the world about the new virus in the beginning, which may have prevented the worldwide financial devastation and health crises of a pandemic.  China is to blame in that it is a communist nation.  Why do we keep forgetting that?  Yeah, there are communist nations still on planet Earth, and they’re not going away.  Contrary to American popular belief, communism did not die out in favor of capitalism.  Communism is China’s core thought and instinct.  Communism means the government takes priority over its people.  Therefore, a communist nation would treat the rest of us with the same disregard.  We humans are not important to a communist nation.  China has no need to tell us anything, and its leaders have no shame about it.  How many “Twilight Zone” episodes do we need to re-watch to understand authoritarian government?

The bottom line is it doesn’t matter who started the pandemic, how, when or even why.  When it comes to this historic costly deadly health crisis, as the TV stars tell us, “We’re all in this together.”  What a strange motto considering we’re warned against hugging each other, shaking hands, standing closer than six feet or even spending time with friends and family who do not live in our home?  Each of us feels utterly alone during this pandemic.  Social media and video calls are a poor substitute for human contact.  Even the dying cannot be comforted by their loved ones face to face in the same room.

The breath of our life

The word ‘disease’ is metaphysically broken down into the syllables ‘dis-ease,’ the belief being we tend to experience illness when we are emotionally and/or spiritually uneasy about issues unrelated to physical wellness.  Hmm.  But the New Age philosophy falls apart when so many healthy people get sick and even die from a disease especially a new one.  A pandemic is unfair.  Or is it?

Take the philosophy a step further, however, and consider the new disease: a lung infection that affects our ability to breathe.  The affliction can become so severe, it engulfs the lungs, leaving them frozen and unable to function without a respirator.  The ill are suffocating, and some will surely die.

Hasn’t the slogan of a large protesting segment of American society been “I can’t breathe?”  It’s on T-shirts, caps and now face masks.  And didn’t that chant start a few years prior to the novel coronavirus?  “Think!” John Lennon sang in a song long ago.

Well, enough hippie mumbo jumbo.  Who knows why we got here and have to endure another pandemic, formerly known in the olden days as plague?  Now that many of us will be taking the Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, we can start to view the pandemic with 20/20 vision.  The biggest take-away is we should never become so arrogant to think the world cannot be knocked down to the ground by a virus, because obviously it can happen again.  Our government leaders and citizens must rethink what or who is more important when it comes to surviving hard economic times.  Whether communist or capitalist, a country is just dirt without people.

In another song, Lennon wished us well with a Happy New Year, the chorus concluding: “Let’s make this a good one without any fear.”

Cheers!  To you and yours, all the very best!

I’m gonna miss the folks this year on Christmas.  Thinking about it, I’ve spent this holiday at their home in Oklahoma since, gosh, 1997?  And before that, my parents were the only ones I spent Christmas with pretty much every year of my life.  Somehow we’ve made a big deal of this holiday, not always celebrated technically on December 25 due to work, illness and the availability of each of us to come together the same time every year.  For the past two decades, my husband has been gracious to spend the holiday with my folks, dropping by before or after to visit his folks.  Although he is an in-law, he enjoys my parents’ rather odd tradition of gift giving.  They call it ‘Chinese Christmas.’  I cringe a bit at the racist term, but my parents—born in the Depression Era with childhood Christmases of no gifts save an orange, handful of nuts, comb or pair of socks—light up during this after-dinner festivity when piles of wrapped and sacked low-cost and debatably useful items are opened and scrutinized.  The game starts with the oldest person in the room, my Dad, taking a turn and then followed by others sitting clockwise.  Each person picks a gift from the pile and unwraps it so we all can see.  The next person can either steal an opened gift or take a chance choosing a present from the holiday pile.  This game takes hours … because despite my pleas to limit each of our contributions to five or ten gifts a year, we prove to be a generous bunch and during the year get carried away purchasing little things here and there, laughing to our spouses when spotting an item unsuspectedly at a store with a wink saying “Chinese Christmas.”  [We gotta come up with another name.]  I am the only one in my family who will not miss ‘Chinese Christmas’ this year.  Ahem.

20^th Century Christmas Past

My childhood memories of Christmas are colors of bright red or green foil wrapping paper, satin bows, name tags with string, the smell of Scotch tape.  My mother being a teacher was off for two weeks along with my brother and me.  We always opened our gifts a few days before Christmas so we could travel to Oklahoma and spend the holiday with Dad’s family.  Maw Maw and her daughters crowded her tiny kitchen with a high ceiling and tall windows and commenced to cooking, baking and roasting until the room was miserably hot.  Maw Maw made the most delicious yeast rolls—soft and warm as her heart, made with love.  There was a huge turkey; sliced ham; assorted cooked beans and vegetables; dressing; cranberry sauce spilt on a plate, its can shape intact; sweet tea; and then assorted homemade pies and cakes.  The desserts were set on top of Maw Maw’s washer and dryer which were in the dining room, a walled-in back porch.  It was a country meal, unpretentious, and everyone left full. 

Each year the growing family, from Maw Maw & Paw Paw’s original eight children, surveyed the feast set out on the kitchen table, counters and stove; scooped our servings onto paper plates; grabbed a plastic glass of iced tea or pop; and found somewhere to eat throughout the small house.  We ate in the living room, in bedrooms, outside if the weather were nice, and the lucky family members got to sit at the large dining table.

After I left for college, Maw Maw had a debilitating stroke, and all those big dinners at her house were suddenly filed into our family’s collective memories.  The eight families started celebrating separately with their own in-laws and grandchildren.  The country Christmas dinner continued in the families with better cooks.  My family never wanted to spend a lot of time in the kitchen.  We either ate out or arranged a take-out turkey meal with all the trimmings.  My parents, it turns out, are fond of barbecue and mustard potato salad for their holiday meal. 

Welcome Christmas 2020

Talk about a hard candy Christmas this year!  We’d been advised by our national disease control experts to keep gatherings low at ten and under then six and under, now celebrate only with people we live with.  Don’t exchange air with people with whom we do not reside.  That would be all our loved ones for most of us.  But with hospitals filled to capacity (and no adjacent field hospitals for some reason), we who are healthy are begged to stay home, wear masks, don’t travel (60% of holiday travelers are not flying this year), wash hands, don’t touch our face and wait patiently for the vaccine.  For many of us that will be a wait in intervals for two doses.  Summer 2021 is looking good.  Be here before we know it.

What I really am gonna miss about my parents is their era.  They are decidedly not 21^st century, not online, without computer or smart phone.  They remain 20^th century, mid to late, the epitome of.  For a blue-collar suburban family-of-four formed in the 1960s, we were representative of a precise time in American history, even much lauded in retrospect.  It’s funny because back when I was aware of growing up in the ’70s, the times seemed so boring.  They also were full of fear: a Cold War with the USSR whereby both nations believed nuclear annihilation was imminent, OPEC and the energy crisis, gas lines and oil spills, Middle East crises, shooting deaths by hand guns, and fear of the future due to certain overpopulation and projected environmental crises.  My memories growing up are more of cold weather than warm.

Despite all the perceived boredom amidst worldwide turmoil, Christmas every year was a beautiful time for everyone, a moment of rejuvenation and renewed hope, universal happiness that warmed our hearts.  Why couldn’t the spirit of Christmas last throughout the year, as children wonder in my favorite holiday song Christmastime is Here?  For my part, I loved being in the school Christmas concerts and plays and when older enjoyed caroling.   As a music teacher, I took students caroling every year … except this one, inhibited by the virus and health experts who maintain singing even with masks spreads the virus faster than talking.  OK.

It’s just that … singing lifts the spirit.  Many people enjoy holiday music, but singers experience a whole other level—deeper in the psyche, passion, spiritual perhaps, a human need.  This year at a new school, my choir presented our first virtual concert.  Each student recorded themselves from home singing the concert songs.  A sound engineer linked their video and audio.  At school everyone watched the presentation on our laptops.  Seeing two dozen students, each in a box, singing seasonal songs, unmasked, was so normal, many of us adults were teary eyed.  Feeling dormant emotions at last.  Silently longing.  Senses aware of our past this time of year and all that humanity has lost … from not touching one another.

I’m alone this Thanksgiving Day.  Just ate a chicken roaster breast with sweet potato casserole, black-eyed peas, ice green tea and a slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream.  Already 1,000 calories, and I skipped breakfast for this feast.

Really, I don’t mind spending a holiday alone.  I’ve spent many holidays with the folks, so sitting here alone typing a blog reminds me of the days when the type of jobs I had meant sometimes I’d work a holiday.  I was OK with it.  Probably adopted a blue-collar work ethic from my dad who sometimes worked holidays for double time-and-a-half.  Wow.  I worked holidays but nothing more than regular pay.  Often an employer would give me the next day off or a day of my choosing.  That worked out fine.

I’m saying that the holidays in themselves aren’t so special to me.  They are not Holy Days, and in my upbringing even those are suspect.  Who’s creating these special dates when all of society is supposed to stop working just like that?  I like work and working and never minded being called in to do a shift on ‘holidays.’

This year I chose to stay home because of the severe warnings by the federal center for disease control.  They’re already predicting this Thanksgiving, the beginning of America’s usual extended month-long holiday season, to be the Mother of all Super Spreaders.  So given my line of work, as a school teacher, I figure I very well could be exposed despite all of us wearing masks throughout the work day.  My parents are elderly as are other relatives.  I think it unwise to go with the hip travelers’ mantra heard on the news, “You gotta live your life,” when something bad could happen.  It’s unlikely, maybe.  But I’m siding with the other American mantra, “You never know.”

So far I’ve skipped a large family reunion this summer, Labor Day visit, and now Thanksgiving and more than likely Christmas.  Not sure if I’m doing the right thing, that guilt trip also heard from travelers: What if this is the last time I ever see dear old (    ) again?  But doctors would say I’m doing the right thing avoiding the elderly, crowds, indoor family gatherings, and this new one ‘sharing air.’  On such matters as a contagious and potentially deadly illness, I defer to doctors.

That said, I’m not afraid of the new virus, figure I could be an asymptomatic carrier, very likely have already come into contact with others who actually have the virus.  I’m not worried about myself and my age group and younger plus those of us with relatively good health.  But there are all those other people out there with all kinds of chronic illnesses, many which impact the lungs and breathing.  Plus, medical experts haven’t figured out this virus yet.  Some people who’ve survived COVID-19 have chronic health problems even involving their hearts.

Perfect 2020 vision

This year has been awful for everybody around the world.  A fourth of our national workforce unable to find jobs.  A quarter of all children in this country alone going without food.  Millions of students unable to attend school or learn online.  Tens of millions of families not knowing where to turn, how to live, what to do, where to go.  It’s all due to the pandemic and mandated restrictions like closing businesses, yet only certain industries over others.

First, what we’re seeing, finally, is it’s not the virus that is the source of our problem, the lone problem shared with everyone else on the planet.  It’s how our economic systems, national and global, work and then don’t work or won’t work when a monkey wrench is thrown in.  Fine when there’s no pandemic.  Financial ruin whenever a pandemic comes along.  Pandemics occur, ushering in mega health crises.  What shouldn’t happen is food, shelter, education and healthcare are removed along with jobs and income, especially during a relatively short cycle of a year or two.

The vaccine can’t arrive soon enough.  Untested, still millions will roll up their sleeves for a shot, including me.  I see it as my duty in this unprecedented time.  Besides, wearing a face mask fogs my glasses.  I literally cannot see most of the time.  I’m walking through this era virtually blind and like everyone else have lost patience.

We just want our old lives back: when we didn’t have to think twice about hugging one another, visiting family for holidays and any reason, traveling, shaking hands, making a personal appearance because it leaves a lasting emotional impression lacking from a letter, photograph, email, phone call or online chat. But when we do live past this terrible time in our collective history, we best start contemplating how to take care of each other regardless of hardship.  The year 2020 has shown us the things we miss when they’re taken away and our very human reactions, from petty to selfish, angry to depressed.  By now we should be seeing the light at the end of the darkness. It’s visible to anyone who wants to see it. Whether you believe or not, the dawn of a new era awaits us.