DC

Earlier this month I traveled to Washington, DC. We stayed in a very nice hotel downtown, the kind with doormen and a concierge. The lobby smelled strongly of "fruity soap" (see Ned Devine), which was not what you'd expect when walking past a huge Christmas tree.

We stayed in the penthouse. It's quite a heady feeling to press the top button in the elevator. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seemed like those who had to push lower numbers looked at us with more respect. The picture is from our balcony. You had to lean out and look sideways to see the monuments, and it was cold and windy, but we had a balcony.

The penthouse view of DC must be common for those in power. For over a century, laws have limited the height of buildings in the capitol. But there are no limits on egos. It's difficult to see all the way down to the street.

I've been to ground level DC before. I don't mean window shopping in Georgetown, which is a humbling experience. Walking into a store where the dresses are locked up because they cost thousands of dollars will slap you right back into your proper demographic.

I mean the ground level where the sidewalk is covered in an old drunk's fresh urine. Where a guard stands outside the bank. Where panhandlers beg on every block.

We left the penthouse to go to the new National Museum of African American Culture and History. It's a hot ticket in DC and hard to come by. I was surprised to see that we were among a handful of non-African Americans there. I stood in line for the bathroom behind a German woman. She told me she'd taken a picture of the White House to document it "before the fall of Western democracy." There was a young couple in their twenties. And us.

I'm used to being one of the only people in the room who need SPF 60. That's the situation every day in the adult ESL classroom where I teach. This was clearly a place to celebrate being African American. I saw young boys gaping at sports stars and musicians and dancers and writers, perhaps glimpsing their future. I heard women about my age exclaim in recognition of someone important to their youth. I was privileged to be a witness.

While I was lingering at the August Wilson exhibit, a man said, "I studied with him."

I said, "I was looking for something here about Minnesota. I know we lay claim to him."

"He lived in Minnesota for a while, but his plays are about Pittsburgh. He was a great man. You know, we didn't have cell phones back then, so I don't have any pictures." He laughed.

After waiting in line for almost an hour, we went down to the history exhibits. They're in the basement. You ride down in an elevator back in time. It's designed to feel like the bottom of a slave ship. One woman became upset immediately and had to leave. The most disturbing thing for me in this area was the fact that Denmark took part in the slave trade. That's getting awfully close to my Norwegian roots.

I didn't cry there. I almost cried at the Jefferson exhibit. Before this, my favorite DC tourist spot had been the recreated Jefferson library at the Library of Congress. Floor to ceiling books in five languages on every subject imaginable. He wrote his own Bible, too, amended to conform to his theological sensibilities. I loved that about him.

But all of his intelligence, all of his studying, couldn't rid him of his blind spot—slavery. His familiar statue stands in front of a large brick wall, each brick etched with the name of one of his slaves. Sadly, Sally Hemings, the girl he impregnated as a teen, and all of her children by him, are on that wall. Even sadder are the slaves with only one name. Toby. Phyllis. Caesar. Suckey.

It was at the slave auction exhibit that I cried. Domestic slave sales increased dramatically with the ending of international slave trade. I stood before a drawing of an auction while listening to a description of babies being torn from their mothers' arms. It was the wall that got me. An entire wall with descriptions and prices of people for sale. One boy, five years old, $5. Oh my God.

We moved on through the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, and the Civil Rights Movement, complete with lunch counter. We hadn't sat down for hours, and my feet were throbbing.

At the end, a worker called, "I'm not gonna tell you what's in there, but you have to go."

I trudged up a ramp and into a beautiful room. Shiny granite walls were inscribed with quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr. and others. Water rained down from the ceiling into a pool in the center of the room. A place for reflection.

"Maybe they're not interested. Maybe they don't think it's about them," said my friend about the absence of non-African Americans at the museum.

I hope that's not the case. I hope more people like me go to the museum. Because it is about me. I've lived for nearly six decades in a country built on slavery. I stepped into privilege and made good use of it.

That evening, we went to a Christmas concert. This year, the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington DC called their concert "Naughty and Nice." It was both. The chorus is good—even coming from the Land of 10,000 Choirs. They can sing holiday favorites along with the best-robed choir in the land. They can also do a dance line number about eternally re-gifted fruitcake or a scene about the impossibility of a PC holiday office party.

But they are about more than that. The chorus was formed in 1981, the same year that AIDS made it's presence known. Their very presence on stage is witness to their presence in our nation. They also traveled to North Carolina to sing with local groups in protest of discrimination there. They sing at the Capitol Pride Festival every year and have sung at the White House.

"We don't expect to do that again soon," joked the director.

They started a youth choir. A small but joyous group of teens has already learned the value of standing up for who you are. It is a privilege to witness.

That, not the penthouse, is privilege. It is going where you have no business going. Being with people who have no business welcoming you. It is teaching to the rhythm of Muslim prayer times. It is acknowledging both the brilliance and the brutality of our founding fathers. It is celebrating the love of two men. It is working to end the stigma of mental illness. It is about erasing the lines between us.

Cause and Effect

Because it rained, the roads are wet.

If it rains, the roads will be wet.

These are the kinds of examples I give to my students, adult immigrants, to teach cause and effect in English class. It gets tricky when I have to explain that sometimes the clauses in the sentence can be in any order. "The roads are wet because it rained," is just as good as the other way around, but it doesn't need a comma. No matter what, the rain happened first. It caused the roads to be wet. Their eyes widen, and they get that deer-in-the-headlights look that tells me I need to explain it again a different way.

Cause: the election. What is the effect? Some people have told me that we don't know what it is. Nothing has happened yet. Let's wait and see. They are pragmatists. No sense borrowing trouble. We'll deal with it when it gets here.

To believe we are waiting for the changes that will come is to live in a different place than I do. I believed completely in progress. We came so far on LGBT equality. We had a black president. Immigration reform had to be next. How could we ever go backward? When some voted, and others refused to vote on Nov. 8, my belief system came crashing down.

Worse, people I love aren't safe. They aren't white enough or straight enough. They're too female, with body parts available for groping. My students certainly aren't white enough. Many aren't Christian enough. Standing in this America, stripped of a sense of safety, I don't have to wait for the effects of this election. I feel it with every fiber of my being.

I'm also less secure financially in the new America. Until November, I thought we'd planned well for our eventual retirement. I'd been putting every cent I could into saving for it. But Republicans have been yelping forever about Obamacare, and I have loved ones who aren't quite healthy enough for them. Too many preexisting conditions. I fear that their healthcare could be demolished along with our chances of retirement. This pervasive worry is another effect of the election.

But cause has another meaning. It's a noun. Believe in a cause. Fight for a cause.

I will be attending the Women's March on Jan 21. I can't go to DC and stand on the mall, but I can go to St. Paul and stand with Minnesotans. All those who have been unnerved by the election, who have witnessed our country rescind its welcome, will come together peacefully in numbers too great to ignore.

I heard something interesting at work this week. All fall, I've been requesting volunteers to help with my class. It's been slow going. Apparently, though, since the election, we've had a surge in people volunteering to work with our students.

And people are putting their money toward the cause of their choice. The ACLU has seen record donations in response to the election. As they have historically, they will be called upon to challenge hate in the courts. The Southern Poverty Law center has already begun compiling documentation on right wing domestic terrorism. And Planned Parenthood, of course, received tens of thousands of donations in honor of Mike Pence.

The effect of this progressive energization gives me hope. I'm still not able to watch political news coverage, but I've peeked at some news. There are other things happening in the world. Life is continuing. Babies are being born. Perhaps somewhere a tiny tree is starting to grow.

We're hosting Christmas this year, welcoming people into our home, to our table. It's the kind of table that can be made smaller or larger. We'll keep adding leaves until there's a place at the table for everyone. Even those who voted against welcome. Because that's my America.
Because if America wants to be great again, it will only be by opening, not closing, it's doors. 

Healing

I haven't seen or heard any news reports since about 7 pm on November 8. For some, that would be normal. News—national or international—is simply not as absorbing as the myriad of other digital experiences available to them. But for me, it's a radical step.

I used to read the paper every morning back when it was actually printed on paper and delivered to our front step. That was before delivery devolved to "somewhere in our driveway." A notice went out from the paper that someone had been injured on a front step somewhere, and that was the end of that. No more papers ever appeared anywhere near our steps. It reminded me of the shoe bomber effect. One person puts a bomb in his shoe, and we all parade our smelly feet openly through security forever more.

For a long time, my phone has been smart enough to deliver the newspaper right into my hands. It was a beautiful system. The Star Tribune, the news from public radio, and my brand of politically slanted news all floated into view from the moment I woke up in the morning. That was before.

On election day, it all came to a halt. I turned from the news that had given me false hope, and I haven't gone back. It's too much. I can't bring myself to ingest anything about that man's impending presidency. I need time to heal.

I feel violated. Assaulted. In my published letter to the editor in response to his "locker room talk"(see my post from October 15), I wrote about the lessons of assault: She is nothing. She is worthless. She has no rights, even to the boundaries of her own body. But nobody listened to me. They went ahead and voted for that man. It's like the girl who tells her parents she's been hurt, and they don't listen. She is traumatized all over again.

But I know that trauma heals. It takes time and hard work. It takes patience with the pain. It takes forgiving yourself for your own actions. It takes releasing yourself from the expectation that others will take responsibility for their actions even though the only thing you want to hear is, "I understand. I'm sorry."  After that, you are stronger.

I am healing. Every day gets better. I don't know when I'll be able to face that man as president, but I will. And I'll be stronger. I'll be ready to fight the racism. The misogyny. The arrogance that casts aside those who need help. The assault of America.

Garbage Day: Nov. 9

It's garbage day in my neighborhood. We have shiny new garbage and recycling cans. The one that's overflowing is the recycling. You can't see it, but the garbage one, the big one, is almost empty. These are a huge improvement over the old ones that blew away in a huge storm (global warming?) We dragged one home from the bottom of the hill a block away, battered and bent. We're not sure it was ours to begin with, but that's what we've used for the last couple of years.

These new garbage cans are the result of a long political battle in my suburb. The idea was simple. Reduce the number of large trucks careening through our neighborhoods each week. The city would be divided into sections. Current garbage haulers would be given the same number of customers, but all in the same section, so that each neighborhood had just one company serving it. Research showed there would be little difference in the cost to customers, the roads would be less torn up, and pedestrians would be a little safer.

But what, you might ask, about our freedom? Our basic right to the garbage hauler of our choice? The government wanted to take it away! A movement sprang up. "Hands off our cans!" said the signs. It didn't matter that the movement originated outside our city, our rights were on the line. It took months of discussion, but ultimately our city council was unswayed by the argument. Garbage freedom was thwarted, and we have a new garbage hauler.

Today that new company will carry away our trash. They will sort through our recycling to remove those 'wish-cycling' items that we threw in the bin, hoping that by some miracle they could be recycled. Our neighborhood will be quieter and safer, and we have new cans.

The trucks will drive on newly-paved roads, over sewage lines, past the water treatment plant. The may pass a school where the children are fed breakfast and lunch. They may pass a park or a workforce center where people get help finding jobs. They may pass a police station or a fire station. They may pass the Mall of America, which got huge tax breaks from the city of Bloomington for decades. All of these things we pay for together, for the common good. 

And then what? It's my freedom vs. yours, zero sum, black and white. If I'm gay, your religious freedom means I lose the right to marry. If you're Catholic, my right to birth control means you lose your religious freedom. If you're an immigrant, forget it. My right to be in a lily-white America without you, means you get out.

The little tree is gone. I took this picture in September and used it in a blog post about hope. I said, "The snow will come, and it (the tree) will disappear. If it survives the winter, it will grow again, no matter who is elected president." Well, it didn't even make it until the snow. Whether mowed down or choked out, it is no longer there. Hope won't bring it back.


I greeted my colleagues this morning by saying, "Welcome to the apocalypse!" It feels like the beginning of a post-apocalyptic dystopian novel. 

"In the year 2016 of the old calendar, civilization collapsed. Frightened people tried to escape the hoards of brown devils pouring over their borders by following a man who said he could save them. A madman, who led them into a hell they'd never imagined..."

Today I alternate between anger and resignation, hope and despair. This morning my entire class of adult immigrants broke out sobbing. Mexicans, Vietnamese, Somalis, Russians, Cambodians, all in tears. "They hate us, teacher," wailed Ayan, a Somali woman. "Why do they hate us?"

What could I say? They judge you because of your race. They fear your religion. They despise you because you're a woman. I was crying too hard to respond.

But I'm not entirely hopeless. We have a lot of work to do. People need the correct information about what is dangerous (lots and lots of hand guns, intolerant Christians), and what isn't (taxes, immigrants). I told my students the same thing. There's work to be done. In two years, they can find candidates to campaign for, even if they're not citizens yet. They can reach out to form relationships with people outside of their communities.

I found a verse I wrote in 2010 when the Tea Party took over Congress.

The people who hate

think they've won this debate,

But the people who care

need not despair.

Though great fear was spread, 

"Mine! Mine! Mine!" was said,

in time compassion 

will be in fashion.

It does seem like the end of the world. Today. Now. Forever. But no political party has held office forever. History swings back and forth. If we work for the time of compassion, it will return.

Lessons

If there's one thing that we should take away from this election cycle, it's that we need to focus our efforts on education. Of course, I'm an educator. I would say that. But we have failed. This election deserves an F, and only learning its lessons will allow us to pass next time.

Libertarians, of course, need to study geography and world leaders. At least their nominee does.

Republicans need to study history. Particularly American history. The part where white people were immigrants in an occupied land. The part where religious tolerance became a guiding principle. The part where people came from all over the world, even from exotic, warm places with strange customs, and became Americans. The part where our greatest strength has not been our military, but our ability to peacefully transfer power to new leadership.

Democrats need to study psychology. They need to recognize that emotions shape understanding in a way that all the facts in the world, all the intricate economic plans, cannot alter. Fear is a fundamental human experience, and once stoked, it takes more than information to extinguish it. Democrats need to study ways of listening to panic with an open heart and show compassion.  They need to acknowledge that change is difficult, and an uncertain future causes many to cling harder to what is familiar.

It's hard to hold everything at once, a complete picture of both past and present, but that's exactly what we need if we expect to have democracy in the future.

Breakfast: The Cost of Everything

Most mornings I eat breakfast burdened only by the day ahead.  I sit down with my perfect cup of coffee to read the news on my phone while I eat. Often it is news about a bitter, seething country. Our country.

I don't think about my coffee. I need it like I need air and water. I don't want to know which habitats have been destroyed so that I can make it through my day after a sleepless night. I don't want to think about the species I am driving closer to extinction with each sip. I don't want to hear about the lives of the people who grow those magic beans.

When I turn on my phone, I may check to see if it's charged. I've managed to ignore the environmental and labor issues around its production in China, but recently I read about the battery. Somewhere deep in the Democratic Republic of Congo, children are digging by hand to get the cobalt for my rechargeable lithium-ion battery. There are pictures and videos of this happening. I don't want to see them.

I read the news on my phone. It describes my enemies. The other side. People who are evil for knowing right and voting wrong. Gullible fools who can't see through the lies. This reductionist view feels safe now. I have my candidate, and they have theirs. Territory staked out. They are wrong, and I am right.

There will be a cost to this. Maybe not violence at the polls or a post-election revolution, but in two weeks, we'll begin to pay. If my side is victorious, my enemies will be silenced. But in time, every diminished voice will call out. Every enemy we make will gather strength. They won't forget.

Breakfast is hard. Maybe I'll hit the snooze button one more time.

Dead Trees

I've been spending a lot of time in the woods lately. Two weeks ago, I was up on the Canadian border, on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. We hiked to Magnetic Rock, and up to the High Cliffs above Gunflint Lodge. The poplars glowed a muted gold, and a few flaming maples shouted amid the pines.


I've been out to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, where you can wander

through the woods with only the birds for company. In the late afternoon, you can walk under tall oaks and maples, listening to a pair of owls call to each other. You can stand, mesmerized by a flock of robins, hovering in a tall ash tree near a winterberry bush, watch as they take turns diving deep into the shrub, feasting on its red berries, then flying back up into the tree.

Five minutes from home is Hyland Park. You
can hike through woods and grasslands, up to a ski hill where the city spreads out below. Beyond
Bloomington's tallest buildings, you can see their echo in the Minneapolis skyline.  Wild turkeys saunter on the slopes. You can encounter a large salamander sunning in the path, who will seem as stunned as you at the encounter.

It's fall in Minnesota, a glorious, post-mosquito, pre-blizzard moment. Nature is spectacularly adorned, perfect. But when I'm in the woods, I notice the dead trees. They're not hidden away, something to be ashamed of. They stand tall as long as they are able, among the young and growing trees. Then they lie at their feet, rotting, until they are no more.

We're uncomfortable with death. We see it as a failure to live. If only we were better, stronger, smarter, thinner, healthier, we would live longer. So we strive to be the best.

Donald Trump is a master at this. He is smarter than the generals, healthier than Hillary, more Christian than the evangelicals, and stronger than, well, everybody. He cannot acknowledge any weakness, or his world will collapse. But that is not sustainable. No one is without some rotten parts.

The forest knows how to use dead trees to nourish growth. I am comforted by this.

Dear Donald

A letter to the editor I wrote this week:

Dear Donald,

            Here is what happens when a woman “lets you” touch her:

            Nerves react, sending panic throughout the body. Muscles tense. The heart pounds. Breathing is difficult. The brain collects all this information so that later she can wake up in the night, remembering the sight, sound and smell of you. She will not get back to sleep.

            She can’t move when you touch her. Shock, disgust, and anger are paralyzing. But later in the night she will lie awake, rewriting the scene. Maybe she speaks, maybe she runs, or maybe she stands and defends herself.

            The most difficult thing to rewrite will be the lesson she has learned. She is nothing. She is worthless. She has no rights, even to the boundaries of her own body.

            Unwanted touch is an abuse of power. You should not be given the most powerful job in the country.

           

            

Virgin Sacrifice

It's a girl! Parents buy pink balloons, tiny pink dresses, those little socks with bows. Girls are adorned with adjectives—pretty, adorable, cute, sweet—that dangle like jewelry from tiny bodies. When they're small, girls need only smile and accept these accolades.

It's when they're older that they know their weight. Are they still pretty? Adorable? Cute? They don't feel it. The praise has slowed. Stopped. How will they know themselves without it?

The world gives them plenty of ways. This actress. That model. This ad. That post. Always prettier, but how? Starve yourself. Dye yourself. Pierce yourself. Shave yourself. Spend your money. Spend yourself. You will never be pretty enough. Never.
And it's a zero sum game. Girls are either pretty or ugly. Ugly is evil. Ugly is stupid. Ugly is invisible. Intelligence can't overcome ugly. Strength can't overcome ugly. It is a terminal condition.

We like dichotomies. Pretty or ugly. Saint or sinner. Winner or loser. Republican or Democrat. It's probably hardwired into our biology. Early humans saw a predator and needed to make snap judgements to save their lives.  Fight or flight.

We see these categories as fixed. People who commit evil acts must have been born evil. They must have been evil babies. If only the people changing their diapers could have detected it. Maybe we could've locked them up before they were able to walk around. They must have been evil toddlers, scheming to steal an extra crayon from the kid across the table at preschool. Where was the school discipline? Certainly they were evil children, torturing animals as practice for their future crimes. Don't we have detention centers for juveniles? Never mind that one was just closed because of sexual abuse. Those kids are evil, anyway. And they will always be evil, so we may as well put them to death when they're old enough. Or blow them up by robot. Or shoot them.

And now we have an election that has laid bare just how strongly we believe in fixed dichotomies. Donald Trump has never pretended to be religious, so according to the Christian right, he should be labeled sinner. But he is willing to say terrible things about anyone. So when he says hateful things about the right people—gay people, trans people, abortion providers, Hillary, Obama—they declare him a saint. Anything hateful he says about anyone else is discounted. His sainthood is permanent.

Hillary is too blurry. She was never pretty enough. She should have stuck with the limitations nature gave her. Instead she claimed that competence and intelligence gave her a right to speak out. And people pushed back. She was forced to bake cookies to prove she could behave herself. She was forced to step back from healthcare reform to prove she wasn't above herself. But she didn't learn her lesson. She became a senator and Secretary of State. Then—baggage in tow—she entered the ultimate popularity contest, running for president.

It absolutely goes against the script. The brainy, plain girls—think Velma in Scooby Doo—can come up with ideas, which the good looking people will use to solve the problems. They will never be popular. I've wondered about the intense hatred of Hillary. Is is really about her honesty? Some will grasp anything they can to declare her evil. But the real problem isn't about truth or lies, its about boundaries.

Something went wrong with Hillary. Yes, she does everything women do to be beautiful—hair, makeup, whatever else. But she doesn't let the results limit her voice. And that's threatening. What if women can't be controlled by standards of beauty? What if they all speak out? Where would we be then? Probably in a better world.

Hope

I love this tiny tree! It's on my dog-walking route. It wasn't planted. There are a few of them in random spots in the yard, spruces and maples so tiny that you would miss them if you didn't look carefully. This one is shorter than the lawn around it.

The homeowner has taken care of the seedlings. Tiny oases of red cedar mulch surround them. Lawn mowers make tight circles to avoid destroying them. If they are lucky, they will be buried in snow before the real cold comes, so that they have a chance of surviving the winter.

This is hope.

It's hard to feel hopeful these days. People are afraid of each other. People are afraid of the other. They are alarmed. They joke nervously about moving to Canada after the elections, as if our country will be uninhabitable, and only the great frozen North can offer them sanctuary. I met a guy from Canada last summer. "I only have room for about five tents in my backyard," he said before I even asked. He's used to the joke.

There are real things to fear. Bad people with guns kill. Good people with guns kill. The end is the same. Bodies in the street, in the mall, in the nightclub.

Then there are the imaginary things we choose to fear. Race, religion, difference. None of those should keep us up at night. None of those should influence our choices during the day. Yet lean a little to the right, and you can see hordes of brown people pouring into our country, knives in their teeth, grenades strapped to their belts, assault rifles strapped to their backs, ready to rape and kill.

Turn to the right, and you enter the bathroom, America's most dangerous public space, where evil men pull on a skirt so they can attack your young daughters. And who is applauding them? That woman who only wears pants, who presumes to be our leader.

People grab for seventeen guns to protect themselves. They believe that the greatest danger they face is being unarmed in the America they have imagined. They need their guns to face the world.

It's hard to hope, but somebody nurtured a tiny tree. The snow will come, and it will disappear. If it survives the winter, it will grow again, no matter who is elected president. No matter who is on the Supreme Court. No matter who has guns. I'll look for it in the spring, with hope in my heart.