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.

Missing (Jacob)

My oldest daughter wore this coat. She was a year and a half when Jacob Wetterling was murdered. Of course, we didn't know it yet. He was simply missing. His parents were forced to imagine places much more painful than death.

Now the family knows. The world knows. It has been suggested that this knowing is good. We can stop imagining horror around every corner. We know where it lives. It is contained. The family should feel better just knowing.

I don't know what Jacob's parents imagined all those sleepless nights. Twenty-seven years worth. I don't know if the truth they learned last week is any better. Now they can think about exactly what happened to their child. The sight and smell and sound of his killer telling the story is seared into their souls. He has become what they imagine when they close their eyes at night and nightmares come instead of sleep.

Other parents lie awake, too, fighting demons in the dark because their children have been taken by predators as loathsome as Danny Heinrich. Children who disappeared into addiction, and never returned. Who became commodities for sale in the sex trade. Who were taken by mental illness.

Some parents don't know why they lost their children. They just know that they walked away. Separated themselves from their family, refusing to look back.

But all those nighttime hours—full of hideous images, which wash over prone forms like ocean waves upon a tiny atoll—accomplish nothing. In time, there is no awake. No asleep. Only a longing for something that will never come. Peace.

The Wetterlings must have had these nights. Over and over again. Yet somehow, when the light came to stab their eyes in the morning, they got up. They did everything they could for their lost son, and then went on to help other lost children.

The thing is, we can all open our eyes. We can all get up, and maybe some of us can help the lost children.

Free Range

Along with throngs of Minnesotans, I went to the State Fair last weekend. It's advertised as The Great State Get Together—when outstate and urban Minnesota join forces to consume as many calories as possible in ten days. They may squabble about legislative priorities, light rail vs. agriculture, but they agree on cheese curds and smiling dairy princesses sculpted from enormous blocks of butter.

Except the Minnesota State Fair looks like a picture of the past. Those halcyon days when fair-skinned Europeans populated every corner and the word immigrant meant someone from Scandinavia or Germany. It's still fun to people-watch. They come in all shapes and sizes, munching on spam sushi or deep-fried cheeseburgers. But not too many colors.

When I'm teaching my adult ESL class, I sometimes describe myself as European. But other times I just say pink. It's a better descriptor. "I'm not white like this paper," I say. "I was only white when I was very sick in the hospital." The fair seems more pink, less brown than I would expect if the entire state came to eat together.

I still love it, though, and wouldn't miss it. Like many fair-going families, we have a routine. We used to park across the street and come in near the animal barns. The sheep, horses, pigs and cows were first, followed by the all-you-can-drink milk booth and a Pronto Pup.  Now we take a shuttle bus and come in a new entrance. Near new food. So now we start with a walleye taco.

Before we head off to the French fries, ice cream, and points beyond, we go to the Miracle of Birth barn, where urban Minnesotans get to see farm animals being born right in front of them.  "Eew! Gross!" say my kids. They like to see the newborns, but not their births.

It was the brilliant idea of a veterinarian who happens to be a member of my husband's extended family.  This year, we spotted her at work. Two sows were giving birth, and the crowd around was cheering the arrival of the first piglet, but she was kind enough to come and chat with us.

"Have you been to the hen house?" she asked. We shook our heads.

"You have to go check it out. You can learn where your eggs come from."

If you're thinking that the correct answer is "chickens", then you, like me, have something to learn.

I like to feel good when I spend my money. I'm not in a very lucrative profession, and I work very hard for what I earn. There are two ways I can feel good about parting with it. First, I can get a good deal. Find the best product at the lowest price and I feel smarter than everyone who paid regular price. I feel like I'm good with money. Second, I can pay more for something worthwhile. Something that will last. Something that will make a difference. Free range. Cage free. It makes me feel good to spend more on eggs if I know the chickens led better lives.

But here is what I learned: chickens aren't people. They don't languish in their cages, beaks pressed against the bars, longing to roam free in the barnyard.
It turns out that what is most important to chickens is pecking order. Their very small brains can only remember seven or eight other chickens. Keep the group small enough and they don't care how much space they have. They are content.

But what about free range? I had assumed that I was paying more for eggs from free range chickens because they were pampered. Not so. Free range chickens are more vulnerable to predators, disease and injury. I'm paying more for the higher mortality rate.

Cage free? A large flock of chickens in unrestricted space makes them miserable. They are stressed and fight more. Chickens need to know their place in the pecking order to be content.

"Every time they open their eyes, they see a new chicken," explained the vet.

In the hen house we saw two cages. The enriched space was larger, but contained more chickens. They could go off to a small private space to lay their eggs. The other cage had about eight chickens. They could walk around in it, but it was very small.

"See how content they are?" asked the young worker? "Even in the smaller cage?"

I'm not sure what a happy chicken looks like, but they certainly weren't fighting. They weren't droopy or listless either. They just looked like they were getting on with the business of being chickens.

It's the same with dogs. We can't resist thinking of them as people, and we derail their training with our affection. We don't want to hurt their feelings. We want them to return our love.

But dogs aren't people. The most important thing to them is their place in the pack. They don't feel ashamed if they aren't the alpha. They don't secretly scheme House of Cards style to take over power. Submitting is as natural to dogs as dominating. If they don't know their place, they are stressed. They need to keep checking on their status in relation to every pack member, human or canine. If they know when to submit, they can get on with the business of being dogs.

We like to impose our own ideas about happiness on other cultures, too. We look at women who cover themselves—Muslim or Amish or Catholic or Jewish—and say, "They are imprisoned. They are dominated." We assume they must long to be free from their cages. Free from domination. If only they could strip off that clothing, they could be happy like us.

But the problem isn't too many clothes. I've heard many women in hijabs talk about their dreams. They sound similar to women in jeans and t-shirts. They want to be doctors or nurses or to start their own businesses. They want that ubiquitous thing known as "a better job."

No. The problem is when women and girls are forced to take off their clothes. I was sickened to learn about the link between sex trafficking and sports. While athletes competed in the Olympics, young girls who had been brought to Rio were satisfying the throngs of spectators. The same with the Super Bowl. The Ryder Cup.

It suits those who pay for sex assume that these women and girls are free. That it's their career choice to sell sex for money. That they are entrepreneurs.

No. They are imprisoned in a nightmare of abuse—physical, emotional, substance abuse. They are not free to go about the business of being women.

Extreme, Extreme Vetting

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it with my own ears.  It wasn’t the call to keep our country safe from immigrants. That’s old news. Or the presumption that we can judge entire populations by the actions of a few. Call them terror countries. That’s old news. Not the assumption that real Americans worship at altars adorned with flags and guns and crosses. That’s old news, too.

What I heard this week was even more unbelievable. It came from the creature who rests on piles of gold in his lair like the great dragon Smaug, but flies out into the world to destroy everything in his path. The creature who revels in setting our country aflame.

We must close our country’s gates to those “who support bigotry and hatred.”

Unbelievable.

He meant, of course, brown people from warm places where Jesus isn’t everybody’s friend. Places where muezzins call from minarets. Where God’s name has two syllables. Where prayer and fasting are required of everyone, not just monks and nuns. It doesn’t even matter if they were born here, like the Orlando shooter. If their parents were immigrants from those places, that’s enough. The problem is immigration, and it needs to be stopped. Then we will be safe.

I am a Norwegian Lutheran from Minnesota. Nothing could be more bland. Yet if my grandfather were immigrating today, he would undergo extreme vetting. In Norway in 2011, bombs went off. Young people on an island were gunned down. All of it politically motivated. All of that in a pale country were God goes by the right name. A terror country.

But if we lock the doors of our country, we also lock people in. People like Timothy McVeigh, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, James Holmes, and Dylann Storm. We lock in all the violence and terror festering under the flag.

Are bigotry and hatred foreign imports? This summer, the Gay Men’s Chorus of D.C. got on a bus and rode to Raleigh, NC to join with the local chorus. In a public square, they sang:

                        Teach every child to raise his voice

                        And then, my brothers, then

                        Will justice be demanded

                        By ten million righteous men.

                        Make them hear you.

There is video of the men standing in the dappled shade of a large tree. The director gracefully waves her arms, extracting exquisite singing from the united choirs.

But the singing isn’t all that is heard. From off screen, someone shouts Leviticus 20:13. When he isn’t loud enough to drown out the singing, someone else joins him. “Abomination!” Then louder, “They shall surely be put to death!” Over and over again it crashes through the music. “Death!”

Surely we don’t need to be worried about importing bigotry and hatred. We have plenty right here.

Magnificent Mile

Cardboard. Corners. Those are the rules. You must make a sign from part of a cardboard box, and you must stand at a corner. In Minneapolis and Chicago it's the same. The homeless stand still. Others move past them.

Who writes these rules? Who disseminates them? Who enforces them? Because after all, the homeless we see are a very orderly bunch. They never step out of their place and, for instance, follow you down the street shouting. In fact, they never say anything at all. It's all there on the cardboard. They are mute. Unless you give them some money. Then they're allowed to talk to you. But only to shower you with God's blessings.

It's all so scripted, it makes me wonder how it can be real. Is it a scam? Or is it that homeless people have to do what is expected of them to generate optimal donations?

And the rest of us. Did we write the script so that we can use them to measure our generosity? Some days, we give. We feel good about helping someone in need. Otherwise, forget it. They're just faking it. Or they're just going to spend it on drugs.

Would we ever throw away the script? Would we tolerate an actual humanizing conversation with them? I'd have so many practical questions. Where do you sleep at night? How do you decide where to beg? How many hours do you stay here? What's your average daily take? Where do you go to the bathroom?

But then I would listen for the story. There's always a story. Nobody was born and raised on a corner. Nobody went to Cardboard Sign University to get a degree in asking for money. Nobody was sentenced to life on the corner as punishment for their sins. These are lives that must have included tragedy and loss, the stuff of fascinating stories.

And what if they were allowed to move from the corner? What if they could walk into the stores and mingle with the shoppers? Would that break the unspoken code that glues them, mute, to their places? It suits us, I think, to keep them still. In their place. Noticing them is optional.

I was recently in Chicago, staying near the part of Michigan Ave known as the Magnificent Mile, home of the American Girl Doll Store. It was the height of tourist season, and families thronged the sidewalks and stores. Teens slouched behind their parents with pained expressions. Toddlers slept, smiled, or screamed in their strollers. But it was the little girls who reigned supreme. Every girl old enough to walk on her own was carrying an American Girl doll, retailing for $115-$120. Of course, you get a paperback book with that, so it's totally worth it. The outfits and other doll necessities range from $20- $395.

Children of all ages, whether carrying an embarrassingly expensive doll or not, have already absorbed the rules of the street. Walking by a homeless beggar is the norm. Acting like you don't notice the person crumpled on the hot pavement in front of you is the norm. Hurrying toward the next air-conditioned, upscale shopping experience is the norm.

I am ashamed to say that I followed the script. But my husband didn't. Back at the hotel, he went into the executive lounge of our hotel and grabbed a cold Coke. Back on the street, he was ready.

"Would you like something cold to drink?" he asked a man on the pavement.

Hair

I have a hair appointment next week. I will pay far too much for a skilled stylist to color my hair. Then later I will pay again for another person to keep it short. She will make sure that it looks natural. As if it were always short, always framed my face and always lifted slightly off my forehead. But there is nothing natural about my hair.

I am conflicted about this process.  The women who do my hair with such skill have been doing it for years. I listen to their lives and they listen to mine. I've been with them through marriages and divorces, cancer deaths, addiction recovery, knee replacements and a child with downs syndrome.  They have listened to me raise four children to adulthood, with all the joys and sorrows that has brought. We are tied together in a unique bond, stylist and stylee.

But so much money, so much time and energy going into hair? My rational brain tells me this is ridiculous. Hair has no significance unless we give it. And yet I give it freely. I don't wear makeup, do my nails or pluck my eyebrows. But I still invest in my hair. Because when I look in the mirror, I have no rational brain. It's pure emotion. Hair that's behaving gives me confidence. Hair that lies too flat or sticks out in the wrong places or shows too much grey, destroys it.

Sometimes I wonder if a hijab wouldn't be better. There's never a bad hair day, and it makes a nice, hands-free cell phone holder. I've seen many women talking on phones held in place by hijabs. Plus, revealing less, you would have to find your confidence from within.

This is what people miss about muslim women. The confidence. It's the covering that throws them off because we assume that no one would cover themselves voluntarily. They must be forced by men. But it's not that simple. A muslim woman doesn't put on a headscarf or hijab for a man. She does it for her God. And for herself. It identifies her as part of her culture, a group that gives her life meaning and keeps her safe. In other words, it gives her confidence.

This is what Donald Trump missed when he saw Ghazala Khan stand beside her husband on the DNC stage. He got distracted by the headscarf and missed the confidence. It's been interesting to see the consequences of his attack on her. The hashtag fury of accomplished women, demanding to be heard. If Donald had asked, I could have told him he was stepping into a hornet's nest. Never mess with muslim women. They are some of the toughest people on the planet.

Once, I taught my adult ESL class wearing a headscarf. I'd been to the dermatologist and planned to go back to class after, but I didn't plan on the hideous bandage on my head. I grabbed a scarf from my car and voila!

"Teacher! You look so nice!" said my students. They were so excited. All those trips to the hairdresser, and it was covering my hair that made me beautiful to them. Maybe I looked more confident, too.