Reading and Writing and the Occasional Recipe

Remembering the Ladies

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 20:05:00 +0000

We were in a hotel room in Austin when James Comey was testifying before Congress. We sat, mesmerized, but then realized our time in Austin was short and there would be coverage of Comey that we could catch up with later. So we went to the LBJ Library to learn, to remember, and to mourn the America we thought we lived in.

Of course, Vietnam, a war without popular support and without apparent rationale at any level, throws its shadow over the Johnson presidency. But, even with that, what he accomplished! Civil rights, voting rights, Medicare, Medicaid, the Office of Economic Opportunity, creation of HUD, the NEA, PBS, and VISTA, automobile safety, vocational education, and on and on—it’s an impressive list centered around education, the arts, civil rights, and what we now talk about as economic inequality. Basically whatever’s getting dismantled now can probably be traced back to then.

But what particularly grabbed me was an exhibit of pictures of each of the country’s First Ladies. These pictures—either painted or photographed—were at some level “official” portraits, hung in official places and at some level selected and sanctioned enough so we can assume this is how each woman chose, or was comfortable with, being portrayed. It’s a fascinating collection. Here are my snap-shot impressions of some of the often surprisingly revealing portraits:

Martha Washington—looks as if she, like George, was conscious that “history has its eyes on (them)”. She looks dignified and--despite clothes that look ornate to us--modest and unpretentious.

Dolley’s got some cleavage!

Early 19^th century Elizabeth Monroe’s portrait looks slightly 17^th century Dutch, but her burgher husband would have to have been prosperous: she’s wearing black and crimson with ermine-trimmed sleeves. Angelica Van Buren also looks fortunate as she stands beside a bust of her husband.

By contrast Anna Harrison looks awful (terrible hat--call Aretha stat!) but she had good cause: her husband died 31 days after his inauguration. It’s said he died of pneumonia after catching a cold while giving the country’s longest inaugural address on a frigid March day without a hat, gloves, or overcoat. Anna, by contrast, was ill at home in Ohio and didn’t plan on moving to Washington until spring. Hmm.

John Tyler, of whom I know little, looks slightly unkempt, but both of his wives (at separate times) look kind of triumphant to be having official portraits done.

Sarah Polk looks moody in her Italian-Renaissance-looking portrait, while both Margaret Taylor and husband Zachary look like they come from hardy stock.

Jane Pierce looks as unembellished as her name. But Harriet Lane, James Buchanan’s niece appears ready to make the most of her time in the limelight, with flowers trailing from her hair to her waist. Mary Lincoln is a visual spoiler alert, looking sad, distracted, and haunted.

Frances Cleveland looks elegant, light falling on her amply exposed skin. Helen Taft looks imperious. Grace Coolidge, who, it turns out, taught at a school for the deaf, is stunning, posed in a red dress beside a white dog, a long gauzy wrap floating from her arm past trees to a distant White House.

Mamie Eisenhower’s portrait shocked me with its little girl pinkness—pink dress, pink gloves, pink bag—and a vague smile beneath those tiny bangs.

Jackie, too, was a surprise. In her portrait painted nearly a decade after she left the White House this most fashion-savvy of first ladies is wearing a long high-necked thing that looks like maybe a dressing gown for Dame Edna.

Lady Bird is also a surprise, radiant and beautiful as she looks directly at the camera. Pat Nixon, as one might expect, looks pained, sitting in her blue lace dress her hair a little too blond. And Rosalynn Carter, whom I think of as capable and outspoken, looks as if she’s made herself smaller for the picture with arms at her sides, hands in her lap, and a slightly upward look.

Barbara Bush looks In. Control.—confidant and at home—while Laura looks as if she’ll be glad to get back to Texas.

Hillary, looking very young, is posed between a chair and a small round able that holds a few items that could be White House mementos, slight poised between two worlds.

And Michelle—thoroughly modern Michelle with her strong bare arms and her decidedly non-matronly double strand of pearls—looks like tomorrow even though she is, sadly, yesterday.

The current First Lady’s portrait has not yet been hung.

Writing about other people?

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Sun, 23 Apr 2017 19:10:00 +0000

I just finished reading a book about Nora Ephron. It was by “her best friend” and it made me grateful that most of my closest friends are not writers.

Nora Ephron was, to me, one of those women like Wendy Wasserstein, whom we don’t know personally and yet feel we know. We feel they know us, too, and we are certain we and they would be meeting regularly for lunch or trading recipes or book recommendations or names of hairdressers…if only we had ever met.

Or maybe not. The Nora in this book isn’t really the girlfriend with the crepey neck or the not-so-much bosom buddy. She isn’t the relatably imperfect Meg Ryan characters in the movies that touched us—she was, instead, the frighteningly accomplished director creating the films anddon’tyouforgetit. She was the uber-connected person who always knew how to do or where to buy everything, cook like a four-star chef, and charm everyone in sight. She was also apparently overbearing, intimidating, and not inclined to let kindness get in the way of making a witty or brutally honest comment. I felt relieved to have never had her personally in my life. Just reading about her left me in despair at the puniness of my life and in need of major validation. She would not have been my girlfriend: she would not have noticed my existence.

And no reason she would have. And no reason to admire her enormous and pleasure-giving achievements any less.

But all these more human qualities laid out in print by the “best friend” gave me pause. The book did not really offer a glimpse into the friendship. I had no insight into the comfort they may have offered each other in the wake of dissolved marriages or advice they may have shared on nurturing children or careers. The whole fact of the friendship was, as they say in writing workshops, told not shown. But shown, though I am guessing unconsciously, was the writer’s small nastiness and glee at exposing Nora’s flaws.

And while I was reading this, I also happened to read a magazine essay so shocking in its ugliness that it was, like an unfolding accident, impossible to tear my eyes from. The author was “celebrating” her mother’s 75^th birthday by presenting her with the harsh evidence of a traumatic family event both had stayed silent about for decades. In the course of the essay, small ungenerous details, clearly added in hostility, made the reader feel sympathy for the mother instead of for the author, as was very obviously intended.

We writers are always writing about other people for a variety of reasons. They are our own reasons and it might be useful for us to remember that what the reader takes in often says a bit about us, too.

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Barricades and snapshots

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 20:17:00 +0000

Two days apart I walked past two lengths of police barricades and took two very different photographs.

On Saturday in New York, in a taxi going west on 44^th Street, I passed blocks of barricades and a large law enforcement presence on 6^th Avenue. Is it a holiday? What’s today’s date? There must be a parade. Later, walking along 6^th, I saw the barricades being stacked and loaded onto trucks.

“What was the parade?” I asked a police officer.

“No parade. Protest,” he answered, telling me that this block, just a few away from Trump Tower, was the scene of protests every week now, though that day’s—coming as it did on April 15—was bigger than usual and was specifically directed at the President’s refusal to release his tax returns.

Back in Boston, in my neighborhood two blocks from the finish line of today’s Boston Marathon, there were barricades, too. A little while ago, I went to watch. The elite runners had crossed the finish line, the late stragglers were still to come. The runners I saw—or almost saw as I stood on tiptoe and peered over the crowds—were running strong and in solid numbers. The announcer called out their names and home towns as they came in and we all were applauding. All of us spectators had passed through security lines and there could have been no one standing there unaware that this was exactly where the second bomb had gone off four years ago. There was a City of Boston sand truck across the intersection of Exeter and Newbury, blocking vehicle access to the race and the grand stands. There were police everywhere, and, of course, barricades.

The barricades will, if history prevails, be neatly stacked by evening and carted away tomorrow, to wait until they are needed for the next public gathering. The next public celebration, show of strength, show of determination, show of courage. The next show of public engagement. Yes, they are “crowd control”; yes, they “hold back” the crowd. And yet, the barricades in a way enable us to form ourselves into a group to send a message outward. On Saturday in New York and other cities it was a message of defiance and determination. Today in Boston it was a message that honored human accomplishment and courage. Barricades, but not obstructions. Not barriers to a mass message sent.

Today I also took photos. I recently became the one of the last people in the world to buy an iPhone, and I took videos (!) of the cheering crowd and, holding the phone high, the heads of the runners. I captured the sounds of the cheers and of the announcer.

On Saturday, heading to the suburbs after my day in the city, I took a picture, too, not as celebratory. It was on the train, the back of the set in front of me: a graffiti swastika. The conductor, like the policeman on 6^th Avenue, said this, too, has become a common occurrence recently.

“I think I know who’s responsible for this,” he said. “There was a blond fellow, strange hair style, lots of money in his pockets. I heard he got a new job in Washington.”

Back to the barricades.

Reading "The Underground Railroad"

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 22:34:00 +0000

I should have read “The Underground Railroad” sooner. I should have read it as soon as I heard about it or as soon as I read the spell-binding excerpt that arrived with my New York Times on a Sunday in August. I should have read it in mid-October after I heard its author, ColsonWhitehead, speak at the Boston Book Festival. I should never have left it to read after November 8.

It is an astounding book. The writing is so vivid that I had a moment of questioning whether the Underground Railroad had been, in fact, an actual rail line running below ground. It is also unsparing in its depictions of barbaric cruelty inflicted with sick and sickening gusto, and its portrayal of Cora and other former slaves who, balanced on a razor edge between fear and hope, are nearly numbed to either. The book indicts not only the “peculiar institution” of slavery with its unspeakable inhumanity, but also the whole white supremacist outlook, from the “manifest destiny” of claiming Native American territory to the new reality we are grappling with since Donald Trump’s ascendancy made America hate again.

Late in the book a woman in the early 20^th century, hearing about “The Great War,” will feel it was misnamed. “The Great War was the one between black and white. It always would be.” And here we are now at a moment when we are hearing every day about post-election acts of hatred-- including the march scheduled for this weekend in Whitefish, Montana-- directed at all “others” who are not white, Christian, and male,.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt what people seem to call patriotic, though I have revered the country’s institutions and its promise. Now that America is over, though, I am despondent. For my grandparents it was the land of milk and honey where dreams could be made reality. I am guessing that was the case for most of the immigrant ancestors of the currently American.

“Stolen valor” is a concept I happened upon recently, the dishonest claiming of unearned military honors. It is a term that feels strangely appropriate, as well, to describe how what is being loudly claimed as “American” now feels so constricted, exclusionary, and antithetical to the promise I always thought it embodied.

In “The Underground Railroad” a character says, “Still we run, tracking by the good full moon to sanctuary.” If America is to exist as America again, at the very least don’t we each have to be a good full moon to our neighbors?

What Elena Ferrante Owes Me

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 06 Oct 2016 21:57:00 +0000

What does a writer owe a reader? Isn’t that what’s at question in an investigative journalist’s hunting down and gleefully exposing the person he says—ta-da!--is Elena Ferrante? I will not write the name he has uncovered. I will accept what has been given to me—thoughtful, well-written fiction that, as the best fiction does, illuminates reality.

A confession: I am not among the legions of Ferrante fanatics. I like her books, but I don’t love them. “Pride and Prejudice” will not need to share its permanent place on my nightstand. That said, I enjoyed reading the books and I appreciate that many readers, especially many women readers, heard their own voices in her words.

When I heard the disclaimer that “Elena Ferrante” was a pseudonym and that her true identity was unknown, my reaction was a shrug. Wasn't her “true identity’ being the author of those works? I was totally fine with a writer who chose not to open his or her life up to close scrutiny, who—just imagine!-- was uninterested in celebrity, a writer who merely sought to offer us his or her soul and tears and imagination and efforts, and, in exchange, be granted the personal privacy she requested.

Do readers have the right to barge into a writer’s life and rummage around for clues? Do we have the right to demand context, background, further explanation? Can we not respect something that grows entirely out of imagination? Of course who the writer is has bearing on the work. Maybe it would have made a difference to me to know that these women’s lives had been created by a man. Though Emma Bovary…though Anna Karenina …though…But we can do the work of understanding on our own. What advantage is there in knowing that Elena Ferrante did not personally experience these exact adversities, challenges, and triumphs, but different ones?

Go in peace, Elena Ferrante. I thank you for characters worth knowing, ideas worth thinking about. You gave me the offering of your gifts; I gave you my attention. We gave each other our time. What more do we possibly owe each other?

“The Muralist”: reading and thinking about art and and the world and other things

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 13:31:00 +0000

I went to see a beautiful exhibit at the Portland (Maine) Art Museum. It highlights the work of four 20^th century women artists, three of them far less known than they should be. In addition to paintings by the deservedly celebrated Georgia O’Keeffe was the work of Florine Stettheimer, Marguerite Zorach, and Helen Torr. For each the determination to make art was counter-balanced—sometimes upended--by life’s making other plans in ways that male artists are rarely called upon to negotiate.

Later, in discussing the exhibit with my cousin Judith Lerner, a painter whose work I hugely admire, she mentioned a book she had recently read, “The Muralist,” a novel by B. A. Shapiro about a woman painter in the male-centric art world of mid-20^th century New York. Shapiro places her heroine, a young Jewish woman artist, in the circle of Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, and Willem DeKooning and gives her relatives in harm’s way in Nazi-occupied France. She is at work on a mural that she hopes will galvanize public opinion in support of rescuing those who are beginning to disappear into concentration camps before that becomes an actual descriptive term. The villain is not the distant and nearly unimaginable Hitler so much as the banally evil Breckinridge Long, who, in fact, as a bureaucrat in FDR’s State Department, made it his mission to deny as many visas as possible to desperately fleeing refugees, particularly Jews. Read Muslims, read wall; so many others, so many ways to keep them out.

What made “The Muralist” especially compelling to me was its ability to let the reader in on the passion with which art is made. Mystical, exhilarating, that concentration of energies. (A digression: last week I saw one of my favorite examples of this, Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday in the Park with George” that, though it was a lackluster production, still got me teary over Seurat’s and Sondheim’s evocation of “an ordinary” Sunday. Here’s a little gift to you—this terrific video of the original cast doing the Act I finale at the 1984 Tony awards.)

A lot to think about at this moment in the world, in our country. And always interesting how fiction helps us see what’s most true.

The Occasional (Repeated) Recipe: Panzanella

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Tue, 30 Aug 2016 13:11:00 +0000

I think the time is right to re-run a past blog post in which I gave a recipe for the Italian bread-and-tomato salad panzanella. After all, it’s the end of August. Farm markets are still open and vegetable gardens are filled with seasonal bounty: there are tomatoes out there, folks. Made it last night but instead of French bread, I used white bread I had baked.

In case you’re impressed, you should know that the bread recipe I use is as easy as all my other recipes. Takes no longer to mix together than it takes to describe. It’s my dumbed down version of this. Mix together in a bowl:

1 ½ c. warm water—pretty warm but not hot

½ Tbsp. kosher salt

½ Tbsp. yeast

3 cups flour

Cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise 2-5 hours. Put it in a greased loaf pan and let it rise again, about 20 minutes or so, then bake 30 minutes in 450 degree oven. You can also after the first rising, refrigerate it a few days, then bring it to room temperature, let it rise in loaf pan, and bake. I also make this with half or a third whole wheat and often with the addition of toasted walnuts and sesame, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds. Or other goodies.

And here’s the panzanella recipe I originally posted:

In mid-summer it’s hard to avoid coming home from the farm markets without too much of something that looked delicious. My downfall is tomatoes. Off-season I don’t buy fresh tomatoes: the world is too filled with heartbreak as it is. So during the summer I tend to go a little overboard. Ok, a lot overboard.

On this particular day I had beautiful ripe tomatoes and was thinking of panzanella, that summery Italian bread salad. It seemed easy enough...some tomatoes...some bread...olive oil.....let’s see. I looked through my three shelves of cookbooks: nothing. (Really, “Nigellissima”?? Really, “VB6”??) I looked online: too much. Too many ingredients, serving too many people. Maybe in the summer you’re always suppose to be cooking for a crowd. Tonight I’m cooking for two. So, as often happens--admittedly, not always with marvelous results--I made up a recipe. And I’m sharing it with you as I made it. No specific amounts, no specific proportions--you’re in charge. I’m just telling you there are ripe tomatoes out there--go make panzanella.

What you need:

tomatoes

red onion

basil

cucumbers

dried cubes of French bread

olive oil

salt/pepper

I cut the tomatoes, bread, and cucumber in nice-size chunks; you can do the same depending on your idea of nice size. I cut some red onion in smaller pieces, because that’s what I prefer. I added a little olive oil and salt and pepper. I tore a bunch of basil leaves. Not “a bunch” as in what Whole Foods puts in a rubber band, but a “bunch” as in what my plants were offering and what I thought looked like a good amount. I tossed it all and took a moment to enjoy how it reminded me of the Italian flag. And then I set it aside in a (non-metallic) bowl for a few hours. Do not refrigerate it. Refrigeration does terrible things to tomatoes.

At this very moment it is still in progress, the tomatoes’ juices and the olive oil doing their magic on the bread cubes. I plan to taste a little throughout the afternoon because the one amount I was unsure of was the olive oil. But I’m thinking this is going to be very good. And I’m hoping that if you find something that could make it better, you’ll let me know.

"A Little Life"

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 25 Aug 2016 15:24:00 +0000

I heard an NPR interview with David Denby about his new book “Lit Up”and his concern that the distraction of the ubiquitous screen is crowding out the pleasure of reading for today’s children and young adults. I was hearing this just as I had had that mystical experience of coming to the end of an engrossing book, closing the cover, and continuing to live in its world. It’s a feeling I’ve had many times throughout my life, one I know my daughters have had, and one I hope my grandchildren and their peers do, too. I can’t imagine my life without books. For me, one of the basic questions for those close to me is, “What are you reading.”

And what I just read is “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara. Remarkable, absorbing, provoking much thought and conversation. A tough book, dark and sad—be warned. But read it anyway.

The jacket flap copy mentions “brotherly love” and some reviews say “gay novel” but neither of those descriptions feels right to me. What I saw was love and human connection with no limiting description. The central relationship is, yes, between two men, but it’s love between two human beings; gender doesn’t feel like what matters.

A lot has been said about the novel’s darkness. It certainly has sadness at its heart, along with unspeakable cruelty, degradation, damage. But also compassion, kindness, and love at its most unquestioning and unconditional among a remarkable assortment of people.

One of the main character is a painter who becomes wildly successful (one of the book’s oddnesses is just how wildly successful each of the original four friends becomes) with several series of paintings of the other three at mundane moments in their lives, most memorably, listening to someone tell a story. There is also a moment when one of the characters looks around at a room that holds signs of an absent beloved—clothes draped across a chair, a book splayed open—all signs of how our lives are lived not only in large moments and large events, but also, powerfully and memorably, in the small moments that make up the little lives we are given.

The jacket photo is titled, “Orgasmic Man,” but it looks to me like someone who is reacting, not necessarily to sexual pleasure but to the intensity of those “little life” moments—to the cruelty we want to look away from, to love of incomprehensible magnitude, to losses, to pleasures, to the whole enormity of what they add up to.

I do have to say, unfortunately, that the book illustrates the importance of editors, noticeable here in the breach, with passages that can go on too long and lead nowhere, with the singular masculine pronoun whose referent can be nearly indecipherable. And copy editing—idiotic things like “binging” for “bingeing” that feels like an infuriatingly sloppy betrayal of a gifted author who has, for 720 pages, worked to give the reader an unforgettable experience.

But that’s small potatoes. My annoyance with that is just that it interrupts, taking you out of the beautifully-written flow of the words. I wanted to stay in those words, in that world in which, for all its darkness, I found optimism. I found hope in the thought that someone so irreparably damaged in body and spirit could endure as long as he did, could find moments of true delight, could be surrounded and supported by the love of people who hoped that would be enough. That it wasn’t didn’t feel like a triumph of the darkness, but a testament to the power of the human connections that, at least for a time, were successful in sustaining the light.

Summer Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 03 Aug 2016 15:34:00 +0000

Was it only a week ago that the two weeks of conventions ended? Needing a little non-substantive refreshment, I went to the gloriously renovated Boston Public Library for a little frothy palate-cleanser before getting back to the weightier books on my list. I grabbed “The Summer Before theWar,” by Helen Simonson. I was hoping for light reading, a confection. Funny how that worked out.

1914 England and the sun is shining down on those it always shines on, English upper-class fortunates. A thinly-disguised Henry James even makes an appearance. These fortunates are in Rye, walking in their gardens and trying to ignore the slow-motion slide into The War, the one before numbering was shown to be necessary. It was a moment when a woman of privilege could speak of never riding on public railway cars but, instead, having a private car which was cleaned by two of her maids before she got it. (A private railway car? Just for her use? Did the train wait at the station while the maids cleaned it? I am still wondering.)

I had echoes in my head of Hillary’s acceptance speech as I read how the (unmarried, of course) heroine was forced to account for every penny she spent from her own inheritance and how she had to fight for a job she was more than qualified for. And, beyond that, the casual cruelties of 98 years ago: a gay man threatened with being outed—a way too modern term for what discovery would have meant, a lesbian couple living in shadowy ambiguity, a pregnant rape survivor shunned by “polite society.” Human rights…..women’s rights….The pieces of the plot, totally right for the time, felt shocking in the context of what I had been watching for the past days.

And underneath it all, the war. Waving banners, patriotic parades, young women handing out white feathers to brand unenlisted men as cowards, and only the most astute observers understanding that this was not likely to be an exciting and brief adventure. Especially for the poor recruits on the front lines. Especially given the class distinctions which persisted through who got on the ambulances, who was treated in which hospitals.

Echoes.

Mourning in America

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 16:42:00 +0000

This morning I am, like so many others, heartbroken. For the lives lost. For the families whose empty places will never be filled. Mostly, though, I am heartbroken for America.

America, which can only be "great" if its promise as the land of opportunity is there for all its people.

Years ago I had the honor of working with the late Jonathan Mann on a project to encourage college students to become human rights advocates. His message was that, though there are many important actions to be taken, what underlies them all, what makes you an advocate for human rights is acknowledging every human being’s right to respect and dignity.

I’ve been thinking about that message lately, and especially this morning, just days past the celebration of our country's beginnings, when we’re focused, through the political campaign, on emphasizing differences, seeing people as “Other” instead of seeing commonality, beginning with respect for the dignity of each person..

In his brilliant musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda has the dying Hamilton sing, “America, you great unfinished symphony.” The next movement will depend on how we see each other.

My flawed candidate, myself

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 20:00:00 +0000

Ok, I tried, but I couldn’t do it: I said I was staying away from campaign news but that was when we had a lineup of candidates yelling at each other about their body parts, aka the good old days. I felt smug back then, watching my side talking substance and showing respect for each other, for the office, and for us.

Now reality intrudes.

At first I was glad to see Bernie in the race. I thought he’d give Hillary cover to move a little farther left and enlarge the discussion. I thought he’d add the energy of his supporters to the effort to retain the Presidency and take back the Senate and House. I thought his modest decade-long record in the Senate would position him to speak to briefly before acknowledging his opposing candidate’s superior depth of experience and capability for the office, and graciously throwing his support to her. I was wrong.

Instead he is, more each day, reminding me of Ralph Nader, who must be the hero of every Bush-Cheney supporter in 2000, a man who didn’t let political reality get in the way of his over-confidence that he alone held the key to Truth, Justice, and The American Way.

But back to now, now when the stakes are…pretty high. “Hamilton” groupie that I am, I am thinking of how George Washington, deciding not to seek a third term, sings, “We’ll teach them how to say goodbye.” Bernie, listen. But Bernie isn’t listening. Bernie is, instead, using the energy he’s created among voters as a weapon—and not against Trump.

I remember Hillary in 2008, disappointed in her campaign and yet, in defeat, generous to her party and its nominee. Bernie, listen.

Bernie, your followers are saying it’s you or no one. Really, Bernie? Is that what you want? You and your followers are saying Hillary is a flawed candidate. Ok, yes. And Donald Trump isn’t? And you, Bernie, who have been treated gently by Hillary and ignored by Trump, you who have yet to see your flaws splashed above the fold? Yes, you, too, Bernie, are flawed. As am I, as are we all.

And here’s what your supporters aren’t seeing, Bernie: the Republicans have been kicking Hillary to the curb since the 1990s, with both every legitimate misstep and every invented wrong they could muster. Twenty-five years of Republican vitriol—during which she continued a life in public service, as a respected and hard-working senator; as a tireless, effective secretary of state—and now you are feeding your supporters the whole putrid stew and letting them lap it up.

Has Hillary been perfect? Certainly not. But picture this—it’s 2018, maybe 4 o’clock on a gray February afternoon, and the President is in the Oval Office meeting with Congressional leaders on something of importance, something like Obamacare or equal pay for women. Or a Supreme Court nominee.The excitement of getting elected is long past and it’s time for hard, unglamorous, tedious work. It’s time for sitting in a room with people who may not be respectful and whose priorities are in opposition. What do you picture happening? Is the President telling the others, “You have to do it my way because I’m a terrific president and if not I’ll build a wall somewhere”? Is the President wagging a finger and scolding, “This system is corrupt”? Or is the President sitting there doing the hard work of finding consensus, building bridges, and, yes, probably compromising, and getting it done? Hillary is the only one I can picture being the grownup in the room, respecting the office enough to do whatever it takes to keep the country moving toward the future we need. She may be a flawed candidate, but this flawed voter thinks she is just what we need.

Stop me before I sing again

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 21:01:00 +0000

My friend Erica just saw “Hamilton” and is in danger of appearing a little obsessed. Like me. She’s the one who gave me the cast recording, which I listened to many times before I saw the show. As Wesley Morris said in his New York Times Magazine article, “To know someone who has this album is to know someone who needs a restraining order.”

It’s wearing. For me to ask Dr. D. to stand by saying, “Rise up!” “(Eyes up! Wise up!”) Those of you singing along right now know who you are. To wake up not knowing if what’s playing in your head will be “He got a lot farther by being a lot smarter/by working a lot harder/by being a self-starter” or the deliciously smarmy King George lines, “You’ll be back/wait and see/you’ll remember you belong to me.” I did say obsession. Or maybe it’s more like possession--being possessed by the songs.

Broadway and I have history. A brief mention of something can find me leaping to “It’s been a real nice clambake” or “you’re always sorry/you’re always grateful,” not always to the delight of the other person in the room “where it happens/the room where it happens.”

I love all those shows. I consider Cole Porter’s lyrics the essence of sophistication. The music from “Carousel” or “Oklahoma” makes me think how revolutionary those musicals were when they first appeared. When I saw the Broadway revival of “South Pacific” a few years ago, its commentary on racism, first served up to an audience newly finished with World War II, felt even more astounding seen in our current century. And Sondheim--what can I say? The perfect voice for generations raised since Freud’s ideas became part of the air we breathe. I even have a soft spot in my heart for “1776,” an earlier well-intentioned but forgettable go at portraying the Founding Fathers, for its rhyming of predicate and Connecticut. (It’s better in the context of the song. Trust me.)

And now this transformative musical that, thanks to the recording, has a reach far beyond the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Ok, possessed…obsessed….I’m there.

(An aside-- proof it’s not just me::

Me to Erica—I’m crazy about Daveed Diggs.

Erica, before seeing “Hamilton”: Who’s Daveed Diggs?

Erica, after seeing “Hamilton”: I see what you mean about Daveed Diggs.)

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant show has also made me think about how much the brilliance of hugely gifted people adds to my life. Dr. D and I recently heard Matthew Aucoin’s settings for several James Merrill poems. We saw Maya Lin’s moving River of Pins , which can’t really be adequately conveyed by a photograph. I read Linda Pastan’s newest collection of poems and thought, with awe, of how she continues to cover the same ground, poem after poem, book after book, going deeper rather than repeating herself, never failing to offer new insight, new understanding, new mysteries. I read Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton before I saw the show, and that, too, is unforgettable, and impossible to put down, which is a little inconvenient since it’s 700-plus pages. What touches me, what reaches out and makes me feel lucky to experience these and other wonderful works is the passion with which they are created.

I am filled with gratitude.

And I would probably earn the gratitude of those around me if I could just rein in my Hamilton habit a little. (“I wish I could say that was the last time/I said that last time/ It became a pastime.”) Maybe if I just think of all those amazing works of art that I am grateful to have seen and heard and read, I can find the antidote to my obsession by thinking about—(oh no!)--”what they did for love…..”

Withdrawing from the Race

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 21:36:00 +0000

We’re months away from the election and already I can’t take it any more. I can feel my level of anger rising with every ratcheting up of the coarse discourse. I am drawing a personal line.

I’m going on a campaign news blackout. What will I miss? If past experience is any indicator, I won't miss much. I’ve got my candidate and if she isn’t on the ballot in November, I’ll vote for the person who comes closest to representing the things I believe in. I won't need to listen in until then.

It’s not going to be easy, but I am taking a personal vow to distance myself from the ranting polluting our environment. I will no longer allow it to pollute my personal environment. If you hear of anything really substantive or important, let me know. But I’m guessing that won’t happen. Meanwhile, I am going to concentrate on other things.

The Occasional Recipe: Carrot Soup

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 17:50:00 +0000

It’s still soup weather. Actually, I think any weather is soup weather, but it’s still a little cold, so others might agree with me. This is a recipe I made up. I heard someone mention carrot soup and that sounded inviting. But when I looked through all my cookbooks and a few pages of online possibilities what I found was not exactly what I wanted. I wanted carrots. A carroty taste. Not ginger or cardamom or dill, not that there’s anything wrong with those. I just wanted carrot. So this is what I did and, like many of my recipes, it’s so stupidly easy that it’s embarrassing to call it a recipe. However…

I chopped an onion and stirred it over low heat with a little vegetable oil until it was translucent. I didn’t let it brown at all. That browned onion taste is delish, but that’s not what I wanted. The quest was carrot.

Then I cut up some carrots and threw them and some bouillon and water in the pot with the onion. I used chicken bouillon though I could have used vegetable. I use something called Better Than Bouillon that comes in a little jar and IS better than any prepared bouillon I’ve tasted. You use a teaspoon to a cup of water. I used roughly 2 carrots per cup of liquid, though I think I may have added more liquid and thrown off that formula. But it worked anyway. I figured the bouillon had enough salt and pepper so I didn’t add anything else.

When the carrots were cooked through I pureed everything with a stick blender. Done and yum.

I was serving it to company, so I plopped a dab of crème fraiche on top to make it look a little special. Everyone liked it.

Enjoy!

Facing Atticus and Ourselves

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 13:23:00 +0000

Say it isn’t so, Atticus. Isn’t that what we’re all thinking? For generations he has been the hero, the decent guy, the mensch we all hoped we would be in the circumstances. Didn’t hurt that we also picture him as Gregory Peck, standing tall and leaning down to explain to Scout about walking a mile in another person’s shoes.

I’ve been thinking--and talking with friends about--why the idea of Atticus’s feet of clay causes such distress. Even though the new book was written decades ago, I find it hard not to see it in current political terms: “To Kill a Mockingbird” was the magic of November 4, 2008, in Chicago’s Grant Park, that beautiful young family center stage, so much ugliness behind us, and that feeling that everything was possible. “Go Set a Watchman” is John Boehner’s declaration two days later that the Republicans’ top goal was to make Barack Obama “a one-term president.” It’s Citizens United and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. It’s the racism we’ve been seeing in the news over the past year and so much more, the scar on our country’s heart since the 17th century.

This new Atticus wounds us because he was us at our best. It is the gift of fiction to allow us the chance to have our own mental picture of the characters on the page. We've carried Atticus in our minds and hearts, taking in what we thought he was saying about human dignity. Children were named for him. People went to law school because of him. And now it turns out he was against racism before he was for it? He anti-evolved? Or we did. Just as Scout grows into Jean Louise and recognizes the messiness of real life, we have come to terms over and over with schoolbook heroes--Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt--whose lives and actions were significantly more complicated than elementary school let on.

So now what? I haven’t read the book yet, of course, but I’ve been reading the articles about it, about Harper Lee, about Harper Lee’s editor. Big front page articles by thoughtful writers. I’ve read the first chapter, released ahead of the book’s debut. And I guess that what I’m thinking right now is that along with my great misgivings is also the great pleasure of seeing how a work of fiction can still spark heated discussion and soul-searching thought. Whatever the fortunes of fictional characters, the power of books endures.

Reading the sound bites

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 18 Jun 2015 18:11:00 +0000

Sometimes all you need are the quick quotes--the print version of the sound bite. Like today, when I’m looking at the online version of The New York Times.

Of course the overwhelming news is the shooting of nine people in a church in Charleston. Nine black people in one of the country’s oldest black churches. The shooter was white. If it weren’t so horrifying it would sound like a game of Clue. In a church with a gun. In a church with a gun???

We do not know the details yet. But we can guess. We can speculate about the role of hate-filled public rhetoric. We can guess that here are nine more victims of racial hatred.

And nine more victims of guns available everywhere. I’ve seen a bumper sticker that says, “motorcycles are everywhere.” I have no idea what that means or if it’s true. But what are truly everywhere are guns. Why not in church where, let’s face it, you can easily envision the need, right?

It could have been in a movie theater or in a school, or some other place where those gun-toting sportsmen (and, sadly--let’s be fair--sportswomen) feel the need to be armed. Don’t the pandering politicians talk about shooting for sport? Why not be ready? Never can tell when you might see a deer. On college campuses, in Starbucks (guns and caffeine--what could possibly go wrong?), carried in pockets and purses just in case. And if we couldn’t control gun ownership when a classroom full of first graders was mowed down, we know it’s never going to happen.

The Charleston gunman has apparently been found and arrested. In his Facebook photo shows he wears a jacket decorated with apartheid insignia. No surprise.

I saw this sound bite, the Times “quotation of the day.” It’s from one Jeff Funicello, who is apparently selling his 1975 armored truck, which has bulletproof windows and sliding rifle portholes. Mr. Funicello’s quote is, “This is America. I should be able to have a howitzer or a bazooka if I want one.”

Not much of a surprise there either, unfortunately. Yes, let’s protect our right to firepower, our right to stand our ground and shoot from the hip. Let’s gut food stamps, reproductive choice, workers’ rights to organize, scientific research. Let’s keep our tax rates low, education and infrastructure be damned. But above all, don’t pry our guns out of our warm, live hands.

One other little sound bite caught my eye, this one the “On This Day” feature. It felt to me as if it might somehow be related to the news from Charleston: on this day, June 18, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights. That was in 1948. The United States has never endorsed it.

Thinking about typewriters

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 08 Apr 2015 10:53:00 +0000

This blog post comes with a sound track: A few months ago Dr. D. and I went to see “Red Hot Patriot,” a play about Molly Ivins. It was presented at the Lyric Stage, with fine acting, our brand of politics, and lines that left us weeping with laughter. As a final pleasure, as we left the theater I ran into someone I hadn’t seen in years. But, in addition to all that, I found myself afterwards consumed by thoughts of one of the play’s props, a typewriter--manual, portable, powder blue, just like my old beloved Smith Corona.

I know that belongs to a different age. I am more than happy to do my work now on my nimble little MacBook. I like correcting mistakes with a keystroke instead of with whiteout or that little round eraser with the attached brush. I like printing out as many copies as I want instead of layering carbon and onionskin. I remember marveling at my first sight of line wrap--that miracle of coming to the end of a line and having the type move down to the next line without my involvement. I would never want to give those up. And yet....

There was something satisfying about the little bell that announced the end of the line, the zip of the carriage return--a tiny accomplishment. All those non-mysterious parts had names I knew--the platen, the ribbon guide, the slim type hammers each with its single mission. Well, two missions--upper and lower case. The typewriter was straightforward, never down. If there was a problem, I could fix it--change the ribbon, unjam the keys. The only thing that needed restarting was me. Even the electric wasn’t mysterious though if you weren’t quick you could end up with a long line of a letter you only wanted one offffffffffffff.

Before the portable Smith Corona there was an Underwood in my life, square and important looking. It was portable only in the sense that it was actually possible to lift it, though not without effort and sometimes inky marks on your arms. It was my gateway device, a clunky thing, but magical, turning my words into something that looked like what books were made of. Even to-do lists looked more to-doable typed. As for fonts, I debated for days over whether my new portable should have pica or elite.

I sometimes think difference between using a typewriter and a computer is like the difference between stick shift and automatic transmission on a car. The quality of attention and engagement is different. I used to sit and figure out what words deserved the effort of being put on the page. I made notes, tried them out in writing first before I made the commitment of type. Now I watch my thoughts spilling onto the screen almost before they register. Change my mind--zip it’s gone.

I’m not going back, of course. Just reminiscing. I’m hearing the sound in my head.

Thinking and not thinking about The Great War

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 12 Feb 2015 19:54:00 +0000

Last night Dr. D. and I were talking about World War I. We had attended an excellent presentation at the Museum of Fine Arts about the arts in the early 20th century. The speakers were Christopher Capozzola, a history professor at MIT; Edward Saywell, an MFA curator of contemporary; and Lloyd Schwartz, poet, music critic, and all-around delightful person. The discussion, with its focus on World War I’s impact on visual arts and poetry, left us curious about why, at this moment of its centennial, that war feels so distant to us.

Why does World War I feel so unknown? (As I write these words, the clock on my desk reads 11:11; we all know at least that much about it.) Even hearing a sampling of the poetry last night--Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon--makes the question feel surprising. No one can read or hear those words and pretend not to know the unspeakable horrors the WWI poets witnessed; they remain the iconic truth-tellers.

World War II, by contrast, feels familiar, almost current. We still obsess over it in films (a recent smattering-- “The Imitation Game,” “Unbroken,” “Monuments Men”). And books--fiction, non-fiction--where to begin? One of the best novels I’ve read recently was Anthony Doerr’s captivating, beautifully written “All the Light We Cannot See.”

Obviously World War II had that clear good-versus-evil story line that has made it such enduringly inviting subject material. But, beyond that, was it that the first world war began, not with a sudden invasion a la September 1, 1939, but with a dramatic event followed by a muddled, hapless slide into inevitability? It’s hard to grasp exactly how it started, why it continued, and what, after all, was the result. And it's made even more distant by thoughts of its participants--Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Montenegro, Rhodesia.

Maybe the fact that that war led so clearly to that other and even more others makes us collectively want to forget it. Maybe it’s this: that the war to end all wars didn’t.

The Occasional Recipe: Tomato Sauce

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 15:32:00 +0000

There are always two kinds of bloggers. There are those who post regularly, predictably, reliably. I’m one of the others. Lots of ideas have come and gone and still no new post. So here’s a quick dive back in, and, given what it looks like outside here in the People’s Republic of Cambridge, maybe something welcome--a quick and delicious dish to make from the materials at hand.

This is the best basic tomato sauce I’ve ever made. It’s from the incomparable Marcella Hazan and is so iconic that it ran in the New York Times with her obituary a few years ago. Not only is it delicious and easy, but it’s almost certain that you have every ingredient (all four of them) on hand so you can make it right this minute without going out in the snow.

Here’s the whole thing: open a can of whole tomatoes, and I’m hoping you have some good San Marzano ones. Put them in a saucepan with 5 tablespoons of butter. Right away you know this is going to be good, because what doesn’t taste good if it has five tablespoons of butter in it? Add a peeled onion cut in half. Again, easy peasy--no slicing, dicing, mincing. Just cut the onion in half. Bring it to the slowest simmer your stove can manage and let it cook about 45 minutes. Stir it once in a while. Here comes the fourth ingredient: at some point taste it and add some salt. Magic. No wonder people went to the ends of the earth for salt. Maybe just a little more. That’s it. Perfection.

When it’s ready, throw out the onion halves and pour the sauce over rice, pasta, whatever. Add something. My plan for tonight is rigatoni and some Italian sausage. But big chunks of vegetables could work, as could throwing in leftover chicken. Canned tuna and black olives, maybe? (And about the tuna--a couple of years ago I realized that, since I was using olive oil on just about everything, why not give up the cardboard-tasting packed-in-water tuna for the good kind packed in olive oil.) Or just a grating of Parm.

Whew, that was easy--dinner and a blog post.

The ribbons: what now?

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Sun, 30 Nov 2014 21:41:00 +0000

So about the ribbons, the black and white ribbons I put on after the shooting of Michael Brown because I wanted an outward sign of my sadness. I said I would wear them for 100 days and hundredth day was November 28, right after the grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson. Not the day I wanted to shed that sign, but I did. Not the right day, but what day would be?

Some people assumed they were kriah ribbons, the torn black mourning ribbon which, in the Jewish tradition, is worn for the first 30 days after the death of a close relative. Just as taking off the kriah ribbon doesn’t mean the end of mourning, taking off my ribbons doesn’t mean the end of my thinking about the privilege that comes with being white and the injustices that come with being black.

So this is what I’m thinking about...how my tall, hoodie-wearing grandsons do not have to be raised with warnings about not looking somehow “threatening” ....about what kind of downside could there be to a society in which everyone felt included...about people who voice support for the police yet don’t seem to respect them enough to hold them them to a higher standard of maintaining civic order....about ubuntu, the African concept of our interconnectedness, the idea that I cannot be free to be fully human unless you are also.

In this video I saw online, Tory Bullock talks about how the daily realities of being a young black man make Ferguson not a watershed moment, but just one more in a long line of heartbreaks. Sort of the way it turned out that Sandy Hook was just one more gun-related tragedy.

So I took the ribbons off. I carry my sadness now where it doesn’t show as much. I offer you this poem, written in 1938 by Langston Hughes, and I hope we can do better.

Let America be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Wearing the ribbons: Day 37

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Fri, 26 Sep 2014 15:14:00 +0000

“You’re going to need more ribbons,” Dr. D. said to me this morning as he read the paper.

Oh, indeed. There was that state trooper who shot the man who, at the officer’s request, was reaching for his driver’s license. There was the shooting of the Wal-Mart customer who was holding an air rifle from the store’s shelves. There was the unbearable prevalence of incidents reported with the gratuitous line, “(Insert name of wounded or killed man here) was black; Officer (insert name here) is white.”

About the ribbons: 37 days ago, I felt I needed to recreate some publicly visible sign of my anguish over the shooting of Michael Brown, so I made a little “awareness pin” of black and white ribbons which I committed to wearing for 100 days. I felt it was an acknowledgement of the unearned privilege I have because of my white skin. It also represented my hope that the people I interacted with during the day would treat me with the same respect and consideration if I were black. A lot of weight for two little ribbons to carry.

I also have extra ribbons with me in in case anyone else wants one. Two people have. A few people asked about the ribbons. But mostly the awareness ribbons seem to be as invisible as...awareness.

In my Day 7 post, I noted that the awareness was primarily mine, and that continues. Also my sadness. This week, as I wear the ribbons, I am watching the Ken Burns series on the Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt. The series is extraordinary. Likewise the three subjects. For all of TR’s and FDR’s accomplishments, it is Eleanor who is emerging, for me, as the true star of self-invention, resilience, and, most importantly, beacon of the nation’s highest ideals. Given the times that the series is set in, there are horrifying pictures and instances of racial injustice, that I am taking in as I read about the most recent assaults on voting rights as well as on human beings’ persons and dignity.

Years ago I had the privilege of working with the late Jonathan Mann on a manuscript, never completed, on how to be an activist for human rights. The first step, according to him--and a hugely powerful one--was according dignity to every other human being simply in acknowledgement of their humanity. A simple concept, but so powerful. A quick look at what exists on the subject of human rights activism talks about first steps including joining organizations, going to meetings, monitoring abuses, large and important things, certainly. But this one simple step is something we can all do right now wherever we are:

Just treat other people with respect.

Doesn’t even take a ribbon.

Wearing the ribbon, day 7

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 17:31:00 +0000

Last week I said that, in response to the death of Michael Brown, I was going to wear black and white ribbons for the next 100 days and some people asked me to give updates. So here’s my first.

A little recap--I wanted an an outward sign not only of my sadness over what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, but also of my recognition of my white privilege and my hope that people I encounter would treat me with the same respect and courtesy if I were black.

A little logistical update--Making the ribbon is trickier than it looks. Since I’m kind of klutzy, it took few days to get it to not look like a sorority pledge ribbon. Now it’s got that little loop we’re so used to seeing in different colors. According to the internet, it’s called an awareness ribbon, so I’m thinking of it as my white privilege awareness.

And so far that’s exactly what it’s turned out to be: MY awareness. When I first wore it, I felt as if I was wearing a sign and I rehearsed how I wanted to talk about it. But, actually, almost no one has asked me about it.

I, however, have thought about it a lot. Every day when I pin it on, I am aware that I am making a public statement about my identity. I feel as if I’m pinning on my whiteness and all the societal implications that go with it, including things I take for granted that others are routinely denied. Even if no one else comments or notices or has a clue why I am wearing it, I know.

Back in the 80s, as a volunteer with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, I took part in a session where we were asked what we considered the single most fundamental part of our identity. Surrounded by people whose answer was “gay,” I realized I never thought about “straight.”

Likewise, this weekend I attended an opera festival where, at at one point, I sat near a woman who was very obviously once a man. Although she wore long hair and lively pink nail polish, her body language was painful--guarded and uneasy. Even in this bucolic setting among this very specific group she looked as if she felt at risk. And I thought about the privilege of not thinking about going out in public identified as “other” in people’s eyes--and about how many categories of “other” people are made to feel.

I am hoping against hope that Ferguson will provide a turning point. I am hoping even as I see the horrifying comments and hundreds of thousands of dollars pouring forth in support of the officer who shot Michael Brown. Every day the news dashes my hopes. But still, I am hoping and I am wearing my ribbon.

One very small very personal action

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 12:50:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I had an encounter with a police officer. I was driving down a Cambridge street and drove through a crosswalk just as a pedestrian was nearing the far sidewalk. Seemed like a totally reasonable thing to do, no danger to anyone, but as I was stopped at the traffic light just past the crosswalk, a police officer walked over to me and said politely, “In Massachusetts, the law is that you need to stop whenever someone is anywhere in the crosswalk.” “Oh, I didn’t know that,” I said and he said, “Have a nice day,” and I drove away thinking, “what if I had been black? What if, instead of being an old white woman, I were a young black man?”

In fact, a young black man I know, a delightful poet who has done tremendous good in our community, had a similar small traffic incident recently and it did not end with the officer saying, “Have a nice day.”

So, as I am thinking, like many of you, of Michael Brown and Ferguson, Missouri, and the long line of injustice and tragedy that shows no sign of ending, I am also thinking of how I am wrapped in the protection of my skin color.

There have been so many times I might have had a similar incident--the taillight I didn’t realize was out, the misjudged yellow light--the thousand and one little things that might have gotten me into trouble but didn’t. I’m thinking of the many times I’ve wandered through a store “just looking, thanks,” without being followed, or how I walk down the street without worrying that someone might decide to question my freedom to do that. There was a Saturday when Dr. D. and I ate a Formaggio barbecue lunch on a picnic bench in front of a nearby school: the school was closed, but there was a “no trespassing” sign, and we were aware of the privilege we felt in our white skin to do this small, harmless thing.

When my crosswalk incident took place, Michael Brown was alive and well, spending summer evenings with friends and getting ready to start college. In the weeks since then, and especially now in the days since Michael Brown’s death, I find myself in daily interactions wondering if I would be treated the same way if I were black. A stupid question, I know, insensitive, societally tone-deaf.

I’ve decided to do a very small thing. I bought some white ribbon and black ribbon and pinned a snip of each on my shirt. It’s an outward sign of my sadness, not unlike the torn black ribbon Jewish mourners wear when a family member has died. It is also, I hope, an invitation to a conversation. I hope I will be asked about it, so I can say I’m wearing it because I am heartbroken over what took place in Ferguson and because I realize I have the unearned protection of white privilege and that I hope the people I meet during my day who treat me with courtesy and respect would do the same if I were black.

It’s a tiny thing, subtle and maybe totally inconsequential, and, I hope, not presumptuous. I am wearing it today for the first time, and I feel a little nervous, a little self-conscious, a little uneasy about whether anyone will react and how I will respond. I’m going to wear it for 100 days. It’s a personal response, but if you see me, I’ll have ribbon with me in case you want some, too.

Pound Sterling

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 19:45:00 +0000

Whew. We can all breathe more easily. The disgusting remarks of Donald Sterling were appropriately answered with major sanctions from the NBA, announced by its commissioner, Adam Silver. And now the whole Sterling-Silver episode is on its way to being a done deal and we can all congratulate ourselves for how quickly racism met swift justice. See what a little 24/7 news coverage can accomplish!

We can all rest easy, right? We were shocked shocked. Whew, LA NAACP which was about to engrave Sterling’s name on a second lifetime achievement plaque. Close call, Doc Rivers and all those players who were caught by surprise by their team owner’s despicable attitude and stepped up to protest with a coordinated wardrobe malfunction during a practice session. Great news, all those other NBA owners, those hob-nobbing officials, all the fans who scored courtside seats who won’t have to risk such tawdry association any more. Racism has been vanquished and no playoff games were harmed. Like a surgeon with the happy report, “we got it all.”

Am I the only person finding this a little tarnished? I think there’s a tiny worm we missed in all the hoopla. This was a start, but if we’re honest, we might need to stop the piling-on and the back-slapping and admit it: it’s not just Sterling. It’s time to root out racism, but the job isn’t quite done yet. It might even extend outside the paint. It’s kind of a bigger problem than one puny man.

Life on the streets

noreply@blogger.com (Ellen Steinbaum) — Fri, 18 Apr 2014 14:00:00 +0000

We were walking along the street and the two women walking in the opposite direction said hello. And the next people coming down the street said hello, too. In fact, many people we passed acknowledged our existence. Not all of them and not in a creepy or intrusive way. Just in a human way--a little nod to the shared space. And when I inadvertently stepped into the path of a bicycle, the cyclist braked loudly and then...offered his hand in apology. Said he was sorry, even though it was my fault. Asked if I was all right. We exchanged assurances that each of us was fine and hopes that we each would have a nice day. Dr. D. and I left that exchange noting that, in Boston, invectives would have been hurled and anger would have curdled the air.

But we were in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, which often looks as if it’s seen better days and which feels, in many ways, like Boston’s opposite. Where the Boston streets are cozy and walkable, Philadelphia goes for the wide vista and the life-threatening street crossing. Where Boston revels in the patrician heritage, Philadelphia celebrates egalitarianism. Philadelphia is sadly defaced with graffiti; Boston--thanks in large part to community activists and with no thanks to the graffiti-glorifying ICA--does a better job of protecting its exposed surfaces. Both have a strong presence of educational institutions, cultural vitality. Philadelphia gets a plus for weather, Boston for public transportation. Philadelphia wins hands down on city halls.

But what’s with the friendliness--presence versus lack of? When I first moved to Boston from New York, I noticed this. Coming from New York! New York, the city people place right up there with Paris on the friendliness scale. But that hasn’t been my experience. In New York there is an acknowledgment that other people exist. Give New Yorkers a shared street experience--a sudden snowfall, an annoying horn-honker, an adorable child with puppy--and they exchange looks. Smiles even. Or shrugs or eye-rolls as the occasion warrants. It’s quick, the underlying rule on sidewalk or street being always keep the traffic moving. But it’s there.

Not in Boston. On our streets there’s no recognition that another person is approaching. Even on my quiet one-block-long street. People are friendly enough one on one, but not in the public space. What’s up with that?

Dr. D. and I came home determined to give it a try. Philadelphia’s brotherly love in the hub of the universe? Let’s see how it goes.