Seussical Thoughts

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It seems that Dr. Seuss has fallen on hard times.  His estate is pulling six of his books from production because of hurtful race representations.  This has, of course, sparked the debate between period pieces and the clearly necessary reeducation that has to take place regarding race itself.  I don’t have a solution here, but children raised on these books are among those who realize the dangers of racial stereotypes.  In fact, even those of us who try to keep a weather eye on our own thinking process can at times get caught in the trap of thinking that “white” is “normal” and everyone else is a “variation.”  The truth is we are all variants and political power, with its not-so-subtle adjunct money, have embedded racist thinking throughout our society.

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Photo credit: Al Ravenna, via Wikimedia Commons

Theodore Geisel was a broad-minded individual.  His works often advocate for inclusion.  He was also a product of his time, even as we are.  The struggle to do right in the midst of a corrupt world is constant.  None of us, I fear, have risen to perfection.  The roots of racist thinking run deep and they re-sprout if just a fragment of a rhizome left behind.  We should all know by now that slavery was evil and that a system that devalued other humans for money was clearly wrong.  We should know that government policies that keep American Indians repressed and do so secretly are unethical.  We should know that people from Asia have as much right to opportunity as those whose ancestry lies in Europe.  Why is this so hard to learn?  Why do we still have to fight to dismantle systemic racism in this “land of the free”?

Dr. Seuss has taught generations of kids that “a person’s a person” and that persons deserve fair treatment.  He did it in the language and idiom of his own era.  Those making the decisions for his estate are not trying to destroy his legacy.  They are, however, asking us to look forward and to try to figure out where we go from here.  Half a century ago we knew that civil rights were the only fair way to live.  We’ve experienced globalization since then and we’ve been made better for having done so.  Yet we are mired in preconceptions that can only damage our collective sense of justice, often falling along party lines.  Dr. Seuss taught us well—shouldn’t we implement what we’ve learned?

one of many

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It’s been some time since I’ve read about the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  There are so many religions that I need to refresh my study on them periodically.  So it was that I received a mailing from the local Kingdom Hall.  You see, the very last people at my front door before the pandemic was declared were bearing the Watchtower and telling me the end is nigh.  We knew about Covid-19 at that point and were being urged to keep social distance, although the authorities were still dithering about masks.  They knocked nevertheless and we stood several feet apart on the porch as they tried in vain to convince me of their truth.  So now, a year later, they’ve reached out by mail.

You’ve got to have a soft spot for a religion that has its origins in Pittsburgh.  Well, maybe that’s the case for those who grew up where it was the nearest big city.  And I do admire that pioneering spirit that says “established religions just aren’t doing it for me.”  The great swath of NRM—New Religious Movements—shows that you shouldn’t feel lonely if this applies to you.  Even today’s Christianities bear little resemblance to the teachings of the carpenter of Nazareth.  He who said even to look upon a woman lustfully was to commit adultery, but whose followers support a president who recommends grabbing them by the, well, where the originator said not to look….  Religions evolve.  The literalism many associate with Christian belief is really only about a century old.  We have no business castigating religions just because they’re recent.

My mailing from the Witnesses included a personalized (somewhat) letter inviting me to a virtual commemoration of Jesus’ death.  Due to the pandemic it’ll be held on Zoom, of course.  The expected flyer with its Anglo-Jesus contains the details.  I did attend a Witness service back when I was in college.  Those days of heady explorations never really ended for me.  You have to settle into a tradition to get to know people, of course, but there’s a world full of ways of looking at our spiritual side and there’s more being propagated just about every year—even Jehovah’s Witnesses have splinter groups.  I suppose missionaries are something we’ll always have to put up with as long as people are convinced that their way is The Only Way.  Trust that others have perhaps quietly, perhaps deliberately, perhaps with a great deal of thought and reflection, have found their own way seems never to be good enough.  Still, an invitation is an invitation and those have been rare during a pandemic.

Who Says Suez?

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“Where was Moses when the lights went out?”  That’s one of the few sayings I remember from my grandmother.  She lived with us when I was a child and she’d say that when someone came in too late to help with something.  I always thought it a strange expression since Moses didn’t do miracles on demand, but I still remember it—kind of a miracle in its own right.  The expression came back to me when hearing about the MV Ever Given in the Suez Canal.  This massive cargo ship, buffeted by high winds, has choked the canal that links the Red Sea to the Mediterranean for days.  This shortcut means ships don’t have to round Africa to get to European and American ports.  While the problems of this one ship play out, over 150 others are waiting to pass through and goods could be delayed for weeks around the world.  I’m glad we have toilet paper.

Image credit: Ten Commandments trailer, via Wikimedia Commons.

Now Moses was known for have a role in the dividing of the Red Sea.  Of course, the name of the body of water is debated.  The Good Book actually says “Reed Sea” and nobody’s really sure where that is.  Besides, the miracle isn’t really credited to Moses.  God did the deed through, well, a strong wind.  If the waters could be divided perhaps present-day crews could figure out how to free the ship.  Photos of a bulldozer that looks like a Tonka next to the colossal freighter give an idea of the scale of the problem.  People building things so large that they can’t control them.  And the forces of nature seem happy to remind us that we’re not in control, right, Moses?

And everything, we assume, will go smoothly if left to its own devices.  How often do we really worry about the Suez Canal?  Or large ships, for that matter?  Theses things should go just as clockwork, we suppose.  Until our order from Amazon is inexplicably delayed.  The pandemic, Post Office troubles, and unexpected bad weather have caused major shipping delays around here over the past several months, and now we have no Moses when we need him.  According to Exodus, God lives right next door on the Sinai peninsula.  That’s where Moses first met him.  If we had a true prophet these days (let the reader apply wisdom here) there would be no concerns for something as simple as a wedged ship.  But we can’t even find Moses when the lights go out. 

Holy or un?

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It’s either brave or stupid.  Maybe both.  Writing about a movie you haven’t watched, I mean.  Multiple people (do I have a reputation, or what?) have pointed out to me that Good Friday (for some) is the release date for The Unholy.  Since Good Friday’s a week away I guess we’re getting an early start this year.  The Unholy is a new horror movie and although I try not to watch trailers before seeing a movie—too many of them show too much in advance—I already have a sense of what it’s about.  This post isn’t really about the movie, however.  It’s about the bigger issue.  The concern many have is that it’s being released on Good Friday.  One thing I’ve learned is that to get attention you have to shock people, no, Donald?  Getting noticed is difficult and outrage generally works.

Friday, for many, is movie night.  Good Friday is, for some Christians, a day for church.  I’ve yet to have an employer (other than Nashotah House) that recognized it as a special day at all.  Easter always falls on Sunday so there’s no need to give time off work, at least in this capitalist, Christian culture.  But if you try to release a horror movie that day, people notice.  Mel Gibson knew that crucifixion could make the basis of a horror film, and people noticed.  Sitting over here in the backwaters just outside academe, I took to horror as a means of keeping my book writing active.  One reason was that horror gets people’s attention.  (It also helps if your books are reasonably priced.)

As a young man I used to spend a good deal of Good Friday in church.  Since I was serious about school I’m thinking we probably had the day off in my district.  Attending a Christian college, followed by seminary, I suspect these also paid attention to the liturgical year.  Then in the real world I learned the truth—it’s just another day.  A day for going to work and increasing the profits for whatever company may have hired you.  When the day’s over you’ll be inclined to relax, and perhaps watch a movie.  Right now going to a theater opens the possibility for horror itself so I won’t be there on opening night for The Unholy, but I think there was some savvy thinking going on, in any case.  And it may just be that the movie was titled specifically to fit the occasion.

Horror Story

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Last week, according to an article a friend sent, Ronald DeFeo died in prison.  DeFeo was made infamous by the Amityville murders in 1974 that led to the Amityville Horror franchise, a series that I covered in Nightmares with the Bible.  Many of the other individuals in that famous haunting/possession have also passed away, including both George and Kathy Lutz, the owners who bought the house and brought it to the public notice.  Controversy still surrounds the story with some claiming it was all a hoax and others suggesting that the hoax doesn’t add up to the sum of what happened there.  DeFeo and the Lutzes were all considered unreliable narrators—DeFeo because he was mentally unstable and the Lutzes because they made money out of their misfortune.  If anything can complicate truth, it’s money.

Academics, of course, won’t touch the story.  Claims and counterclaims, all swirling around lucre, fog one’s vision.  The story illustrates just how difficult it can be to get at the truth.  Even allowing for exaggeration, it seems something happened there.  A worldview that dismisses any possibility of spiritual entities—however defined—will necessarily come up negative.  No doubt, considerable money changed hands.  The franchise is still going with no less than four movies being released last year with Amityville in their titles.  Getting at the truth involves decided which human beings you trust.  The one Lutz child that has been willing to talk, Daniel, has continued the claims.  How can we ever know?

I object to those who claim that such inquiry is a waste of time.  If such things as claimed in Jay Anson’s book do happen (even if exaggerated), it may be that they’re exceptionally rare.  Rarity of objects in the physical world is seldom in doubt.  Ask any auctioneer.  Getting into the accounts around the events, however, betrays a list of money-seeking individuals.  Just about anyone making a counter-claim had a book deal in mind, and given the phenomenal success of Anson’s original the possibility of getting to the truth after that would always involve wading through greed.  No wonder politicians so easily become crooked!  Money makes people do strange things.  Not surprisingly, those left with questions regarding the truth of the matter are left hungry.  It’s clear that Ronald DeFeo killed his family.  It’s a matter of record that the Lutz family moved into the house just over a year later and moved out without their belongings less than a month after that.  Beyond this what happened is less and less likely ever to be known.

Clearly Conspiracy

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What an odd place to find ourselves in.  Some evangelical Christians, who used to be guardians of decency and moral human behavior, now have to have their clergy explain to them why Trump wasn’t the messiah he’d been touted as for the last four years.  A piece in the Los Angeles Times recently described the struggles of one such minister with his congregation that had fully bought into the conspiracy theories Trump promulgated in order to mask his own lack of care for his country and its citizens.  Conspiracy theories have become big business in academia with faculty from many departments exploring them.  I haven’t seen much in the way of religion departments participating in the discussion, but I think they should.  Why?  Religions are all about getting people to believe and act in prescribed ways.

Image credit: Johann Lund, Wikimedia Commons

Not that religions alone can explain this.  Psychologists and sociologists must have some important insights as well.  I used to tell my students that not all religions are about beliefs.  Some have to do with behaviors—acting in a certain way, regardless of belief, is to be part of it.  Certainly that explains part of the membership in the cult of Trump.  Many who follow it must know in their consciences that a man who defrauds the government he “governs,” who actively womanizes, and who displays overt racism can’t be the ideal evangelical.  Ah, but the conspiracy theories explain it!  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, right?  You can sure get away with a lot that way.

Religions have a lot to teach us about both strange behaviors and strange actions.  Many years ago someone pointed out to me as I was enumerating what I considered odd beliefs of a New Religious Movement just how odd Christianity looks from the outside.  When I stopped to think about it, this made sense.  The unconventional aspects of the faith had become naturalized because I’d been taught all my life that they were true—unlike all other religious beliefs.  Not only that, but I had been taught that accepting them without question was the only way to avoid Hell.  Over the years the strangeness became normal.  Trump and his conspiracy theories had their way smoothed by an evangelical narrative of unquestioning belief instead of an examined faith.  Now many ministers, awaking sober, are having to try to convince their flocks that they’d accepted lies for truths.  It’s an uphill battle, unfortunately.  Religions, after all, have been about getting followers to believe without questioning, or, apparently, considering the source.

Taxing Thoughts

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Tax season has come with a new fear this year.  We had to visit our accountant’s small office to sign things.  We managed to get last year’s taxes filed before the pandemic became evident.  This year I spent weeks worrying about the upcoming appointment.  Sitting in a room with a man I both respect and fear.  Our government loves its paperwork, and although you can file electronically you still have to pay any amounts owed (on the state or local level) with actual paperwork.  That paperwork has to be signed.  To do so you need to meet an actual person who has some inkling of how this all works.  Ironically, the technology exists for taxes to be done automatically by the government.  Groups like Intuit, the owners of TurboTax, lobby the government not to make it easier.  Intuit would lose its income stream.

I don’t mind paying taxes.  I did chafe a bit the past four years, knowing I was supporting an evil government, but overall I understand that we all need to contribute in order for things to continue to run (somewhat) smoothly.  The thing that frightens me is being in a room with someone who might’ve been earlier talking with someone who had a dread disease.  Last week marked the one-year breaking point.  My wife and I agree that March 12 was the day the news turned utterly ominous.  Although the Trump administration knew about the disease, it had decided simply to ignore it.  Now, with more than half-a-million Americans dead, we’re still paying our taxes to try to undo the damage that one man did.

The more immediate problem is how to survive getting those tax papers signed.  Ironically, I can oversee the acquisition, editing, production, and sale of a physical book without ever having to touch a piece of paper.  It’s a marvel, really.  In fact, many of the books I acquire I don’t see until months after they’re published.  For taxes, however, we still need to send the physical paper in.  The alternative is TurboTax.  They add on so many fees that we ended up paying them as much as an actual accountant last time we did our own taxes.  I’m happy to pay a human being to do them, and I even like our accountant.  It’s just that it doesn’t feel safe to go inside somebody else’s space right now.  It’s a little too cold and wet to stand outside and sign the papers with trembling fingers.  Perhaps next year we’ll be able to do our part without fear.

That Time Again

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Where’d it go?  I could swear I left an hour sitting right here on the table, and now it’s gone.  That’s the feeling of waking up the day of Daylight Saving Time.  Sure, it’ll stay light later now, but the mornings, when hope is most necessary, are once again dark.  It’s funny how we play with time.  I’ve known many people who love the end of Daylight Saving Time because of the illusion that they’ve gained another hour of sleep.  In fact, it’s just a deferred payment.  The great time-keeper in the sky won’t be cheated.  So—pardon my yawn—we’re adjusting again.  One of the great mysteries of this is that keeping Daylight Saving Time permanent has strong bi-partisan support in the US government.  It never becomes law, however, because riders are constantly attached to it, making one side or the other back out.  And so we all spend a couple weeks trying to get our circadian rhythms to adjust.  Again.

I’ve often wondered about the timing for this change.  Why Sunday morning?  In this nation that likes to pretend to be Christian, it’s a regular joke that folks in pre-pandemic times would miss church, having forgot to set their clocks ahead.  One incredibly busy Sunday in Edinburgh, my wife and I had missed church altogether.  I’m thinking it must’ve been in the final throes of getting my dissertation finished.  When supper-time rolled around we found we were out of some ingredients and we went to the local grocery to find, of all things, it was closed early.  It was only then that we had to stop and laugh at ourselves.  We’d just spent an entire day out of joint with time and didn’t even know it.  In pre-internet days it was possible for that to happen.

Most of our clocks now set themselves automatically.  I still wear an old-fashioned analogue watch.  I need to set it manually, which keeps me on my toes when Daylight Saving Time approaches.  O yes, and the clocks in the cars are off—they’re not wired in that way, being older models.  And the one on the microwave.  I can always use my phone for the accurately predetermined time on which we all agree to operate.  Even if the morning skies, which were starting to be light at six now stay dark until seven.  In another month we’ll catch up again.  And Daylight Saving Time, instead of being a strange intrusion, like most unwanted guests, will begin to feel like normal.

International Women’s Day 2021

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Changing one’s way of thinking is difficult.  So difficult that we generally don’t try it unless we’re compelled to do so.  One such compulsion is education.  Cultures that have embraced education are those that have led to great advances.  In this context it’s more than a little surprising that women’s rights are still held to be less important than those of men.  More education is required, it seems.  Today is International Women’s Day.  Of course it’s not a day off work because capitalism is all about men’s need for endless acquisition.  At least we can pause and consider for a few moments that life itself wouldn’t be possible without women, and justice, nearly worldwide, is represented in feminine form.  What can we do to make the world open its eyes to the obvious?

I read a lot about religion.  While I post here about the books I read, they are really only the tip of an iceberg.  My job largely consists of reading.  One of the themes that constantly runs through my own personal continuing education is that religion has indelibly changed our ways of thinking.  Even strident atheists today announce their stridency from a context formed by religion.  I’ve pointed out on this blog numerous times where even scientific thinking is mired in a wider context that has been constructed by religious thought.  One of those larger contexts is the subordinate role of women.  It is likely no coincidence that matriarchal cultures developed where there wasn’t a religion devised by men to impose a patriarchal governance on the world.  It’s so obvious once you learn to see it.  We need to be educated.

Women, it is obvious from an unbiased point of view, are equal to men.  As we educate ourselves further about gender and how religion has informed its perception, we come to realize that even binary assumptions—either male or female—are premature.  Underlying it all is humanity.  Human lives.  Those of men are no more important than those of women, or of those between.  Religions often like to make sharp distinctions.  Those distinctions are more abstract than reality.  The world is made up of real people and roughly half of them are female.  Today is set aside to recognize and celebrate that fact.  To recognize the contributions women have always made to society and civilization.  Let’s take the opportunity to educate ourselves, and  let’s be conscious of the fact that women are just as valuable as men and their foibles.  More than that, let’s put this truth into practice.

Not the Band

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One of my favorite weekend treats involves black-eyed peas.  With a father from South Carolina, some of my earliest memories involve soul food.  As a present-day vegan, I eat a lot of beans.  That’s why I was disappointed to learn that Goya’s CEO, Robert Unanue, continues to be a big Trump supporter.  Shame on you, Goya!  Lest you get the wrong idea, we generally buy the store brand beans.  Of all the legumes, however, it seems the humble black-eyed pea is difficult to get right.  The generic brands always end up with the bottom part of the can being a kind of beige sludge where the beans have broken down and lost, as it were, their individuality.  The dish I make (one of my own invention, also featuring grits and hot sauce) requires that the beans maintain their integrity—take note, Goya!  Said brand seems to be the one that understands this aspect of canning beans.

For many years I avoided Bush beans for fear that they might be enriching the other *ahem* Bushes.  Right now, however, I’d rather have W run for a third term than the specter of Goya-supported Trump.  When did legumes become politicized?  Why can’t I sit down to a peaceful Saturday morning breakfast without a hideous four-year nightmare coming to mind?  The perils of being vegan!  In any case, I recently tried Bush black-eyed peas.  They weren’t as good as Goya, but I think I need to make the switch.  I’ve never had my somewhat simple culinary tastes disrupted by a president before.  Generic would be fine, but why, o why can’t they get the black-eyed pea right?

Image credit: Jud McCranie, via Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps somewhat oddly, I really like beans.  There are about 400 varieties and each has its own personality from sassy edamame to staid kidney beans.  I’ve even reconciled myself to the childhood nightmare of the lima bean (alien, without a hint of lime).  Now, I’m no foodie.  I eat to live rather than the other way around.  Whatever I do, however, I search my conscience.  Raised evangelical I know no way around it.  My conscience is the main reason for becoming vegan—I can’t support animal cruelty, especially for an industry that is the largest environmental polluter in the world.  So when I’m standing in front of the bean shelf, thinking ahead to Saturday’s breakfast, I’m struck with qualms.  I stare at the black-eyed peas and they stare back at me.  It’s a kind of test of the wills.  I see the Goya and decide to try something better for the world.  

J-Horror

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J-Horror better move over.  There’s a new kid on the block.

For many years those of us strange fans of horror have used “J-Horror” as shorthand for Japanese Horror.  With two highly successful films (eventually series) of the mid-nineties (Ju-On and Ringu) the Japanese contribution stormed back into American consciousness.  Those of us who grew up on Godzilla knew that J-Horror had been around for decades already, but these new movies were distinctly creepy.  So much so that English-language versions were remade for both original films (The Grudge and The Ring, respectively—rather like Let the Right One In and Let Me In).  So far, so good.  So why does J-Horror need to move over?

At least three separate friends have pointed me to another emerging J-Horror trend: Jewish horror movies.  These used to be rare.  With cases of early antisemitic themes in horror, and the real life horror of the Holocaust, this is certainly understandable.  “Christian” producers or directors delving into Jewish themes would seem to be in bad taste.  Still, some notable Jewish-themed horror has begun to emerge.  (I addressed one such film in my recent Horror Homeroom piece.)  The Possession (discussed in both of my most recent books) centers around the need for a Jewish exorcist in the case of a dybbuk problem.  For more information, you know where to look!  It seemed to me that the dybbuk box contents were reminiscent of the Holocaust, but that may not have been intentional.

I recently wrote a post about The Golem.  This is a recent Israeli movie that builds on the traditional Jewish monster.  Although set before the Holocaust, the fact that there’s a pogrom in the film shows that the concept is not far off.  The movie that people have recently been pointing me toward is The Vigil.  I’ve not had an opportunity to see it yet, but the press it’s received suggests it too will be another classic based on lived experience in Judaism.  I’m not sure if Jewish horror will eventually rival the numbers of Japanese horror films, but the offerings thus far have been noteworthy.  Horror often addresses the problem of human suffering.  With all the oppressions in “white” society, it’s no wonder that, along with Black horror, Jewish horror is beginning to garner attention.  Although it’s clearly not to everyone’s taste, horror is often a genre with a conscience.  It becomes a screen on which we can see our worst behaviors projected.  And if we’re wise, we’ll take steps to make such suffering become merely an unfortunate memory.

Tomorrow’s Brainchild

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The voice of one person is very small.  Even a guy like Donald Trump wouldn’t be the terrible threat to this nation that he is if nobody would pass on the nonsense he says.  I often think of this because internet personalities are always have to remind their fans to share their posts.  It’s a simple thing—click “share” and more people find out about something.  What if that something were free?  Isn’t something free worth sharing?  So tomorrow I’ll be participating in Virtual Voices Author Fair: A Day of Nonfiction Books, a small Zoom conference from one to five, to talk about Holy Horror.  Various readers over the years have asked if they can get a discounted copy—like most conferences this one will have a discount associated with it.  Stop by if you have the chance!

The variety of the books being discussed is pretty wide.  Topics will cover many of the areas for which the publisher McFarland is known: television, film, music, politics, the outdoors, and more.  A schedule may be found here.  For those of us who have been (or the lucky who still are) academics, the conference is a sacred cow that has largely been sacrificed to the pandemic.  Getting together with others to discuss ideas is important—the funny thing about ideas is that they often arise from talking with others.  For three years, for instance, the American Academy of Religion offered a session on monsters and monster theory.  That would never have happened if I hadn’t had a discussion with a friend and colleague who shared that interest.  If it’d been only me, it never would’ve transpired.  Sharing is important.

One of the things about generations is that mine (no longer the younger one), is still trying to wrap its collective head around this internet thing.  Now we feel like a bunch of avatars with no onboarding.  We don’t think in terms of clicking a share button.  We still feel like browsing is an individual thing.  They young people I know tend to think of the internet as a place for community.  It’s easier to find like-minded people there.  Unlike school (and often work) where you’re thrown together with people who may or may not share your interests, the web offers places where you can find others who share your interest.  If you’re interested in the kinds of things that you’ll find in the media, and if you have a few minutes tomorrow afternoon, feel free to stop by the Virtual Voices Author Fair.  If you land on their Facebook page, it’d be great if you’d click the share button.

Weird Dreams

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It’s almost like we’re all part of a huge experiment, perhaps orchestrated from outer space, to see how we react to being caged.  The pandemic and its associated lockdowns have held us in place for nearly a year now.  Long enough that I’ve started to dream about it.  For the longest stretch of time my dreams remained in “normal mode.”  That is to say, people talked about the pandemic very little and it was represented only by the occasional dream anxiety that I wasn’t wearing a mask.  I have yet to recall a dream wherein people are wearing masks.  Recently I dreamed that I had to start commuting again, and I climbed on the bus only to remember I’d forgotten my mask at home.  It was like one of those showing up to school without your pants on dreams,  only scarier.

Dreams are an antidote to the sameness of our days, I suppose.  I’ve watched as stable folks I know start to show signs of isolation stress.  I’m sure that I’m showing them too, but the thing is we often don’t see such things in ourselves.  We’re social animals and we’ve been kept in separate cages for a long time now.  I used to go to zoos and feel sorry for the obviously neurotic animals bored out of their skulls, isolated from their species.  Even as we were being told that animals don’t think and don’t have emotions, it was clear that their having interactions with our species was like us having nothing but Zoom meetings to keep us in company.  It’s artificial, but since the zookeepers have us in separate cages we try to act as if it’s normal.

Speaking of neurotic, at least around here since Trump’s been mostly out of the public eye people have begun wearing masks.  Nothing demonstrates that we’re herd animals better than the fact that an obvious charlatan was able to convince millions of people that he doesn’t care only about himself.  Funny how people can be used and not even know it.  We’ve been enjoying national sanity for just over a month now and things seem like the meds may be kicking in.  Vaccine production is booming and, apart from logistic issues, many people are receiving the necessary protection.  It’s always made sense to me that other beings exist in the universe.  I’m not so arrogant as to assume that we’re all that special.  Looking over the past year, it seems as if we may all be guinea pigs after all.

Women’s History

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March is Women’s History Month.  My reading of actual history as of late has focused on the ancient Celts, so I confess to falling behind on modern women’s history.  Nevertheless, I came across an often forgotten piece in an unexpected way.  For quite some time I’ve wanted to read some work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  Her story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is known as a gothic classic.  Since a short story isn’t enough to make up an entire book, publishers have arranged different combinations of her tales into thin books that can be sold as a unit.  I purchased the Dover Thrift Editions’ version of The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories.  It was there that I learned Gilman was an early feminist who seems to have become unsung in more recent times.  Her fiction, at least as reflected in this particular edition, demonstrates the truth of the assertion.

Most of the tales in this little book require only a few minutes to read.  Although written around the turn of the nineteenth century, her stories anticipated many modern developments for women.  Her protagonists see the inequalities between the genders and work to overcome them.  They prove themselves successful at business and setting up their own houses.  There’s a gentleness to these stories that suggests quiet confidence may eventually wear down the often inflated male ego.  I found myself captivated even after finishing “The Yellow Wallpaper” itself.  Gilman isn’t judgmental, but she does note how unfairly the system operates.  She also offers solutions.

In this month of women’s history, it seems appropriate to rediscover one of the female writers who personally worked for women’s rights and expressed herself so fluently in fiction.  Her “If I Were a Man,” although clearly a period piece, takes a woman into her husband’s body.  She walks in his shoes, literally, and sees what “the world of men” is like.  This leads to both understanding and, above all, learning.  This would seem to be the very heart of history.  We read to learn both from what we did correctly to what we did wrong.  We have done so terribly much wrong.  The historical oppression of women is one of the greatest examples of our inability to catch up with our own ideals of justice and fairness.  There were historical reasons for this, yes, but we have moved beyond those times.  If only we’d act like it.  Although my reading doesn’t always keep in sync with the seasons, discovering Charlotte Perkins Gilman at this point in time was somehow more appropriate than anticipated.

Come People and Consider

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“Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.  This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.”  So Daniel answered the megalomanic king Nebuchadnezzar, according to chapter 2.  This is some Scripture that CPAC has chosen to ignore, or at least not bothered to read to the end.  In truth I was always bothered when Daniel said “Thou art this head of gold”—which seems to be more brass-kissery, if you get my drift, than prophecy.  But dear CPAC, the statue of Nebuchadnezzar crumbles when the kingdom of God arrives, unable to stand on its feet of clay and iron.

Image in public domain, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

I’m not one to tout Daniel as prophecy, but seldom have we seen such things come true so literally.  If we turn to the other testament, in a somewhat politically incorrect aphorism a personage of the gospel of Matthew quoth, “they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”  Funnily, those who claim to support a “Christian” America have failed to read even the surface of the Good Book.  Without the Bible what is fundamentalism?  That image in Daniel 2 is considered an idol.  After all, when the Trump of antiquity built a statue all were required to fall down before and worship it.  Those who didn’t were thrown into the fiery furnace.

The Conservative Political Action Conference has sent shivers down the collective spine of our nation.  Even as it was going on I was standing in the rain signing petitions for local Democratic candidates because going inside meant being potentially infected by the Republican disease known as Covid-19.  Apparently half-a-million dead is never enough for those who believe in a social darwinism although they claim to base their lives on the book that says all this took a mere seven days.  Although Daniel gained great fame and wealth by telling the king what he wanted to hear, during a party a few short chapters later he saw a hand writing on the wall.  “And this is the writing that was written, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.”  And although given a third of Belshazzar’s kingdom that very night it was all lost to Darius.  “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.”