I suppose it’s cowardly of me to say there is so much to critique about the insane behavior of the current occupant of the White House and his scores of enablers that I don’t have the bandwidth to write about any of it.

Just as I get my thoughts together about the detention of asylum seekers and separation of children, some never to see their families again (!), the Trump administration attacks legal immigrants seeking green cards. Just as I get my thoughts together on the further wrecking of the endangered species act, the idiot says windmill cause cancer. (Has anyone watched the clips from Trump’s recent rallies? It’s just not what he says but the incoherence of his speech that is astounding.)

Instead of draining the swamp, he has cause a “brain drain” across all the agencies of government while keeping in power (regretfully I call them evil and heartless) Stephen Miller and Mitch McConnell, and those newer to the scene like Ken Cuccinelli (who paraphrased Lady Liberty’s poem/plaque: “Bring me your tired, your poor…who can stand on their own two feet”) or the Repub congressperson who said we wouldn’t have a human population if not for the babies resulting from rape and incest. How can these people have been appointed/elected?

So I’m writing today simply to urge you to watch three segments from Democracy Now of August 19. The show reports on the work of “No More Deaths” and other compassionate activists who leave food and water for migrants in the Sonoran Desert.

Here, here and here.

I congratulate Amy Goodman for going on location in extreme heat with Scott Warren and his cohorts. The bodies and bones of thousands of travelers have been, and continue to be, found. Activist Geena Jackson leaves notes in Spanish along with the water drops and cans of pop-top beans. She says, “I write, ‘Ánimo!’ and ‘¡Mantenga la fuerza!’ and ‘¡Sí, se puede!’ and words of — I don’t know — words of strength.” I was also moved to tears hearing of their efforts to help families who try to track their relatives who have disappeared on the perilous journey.

White supremacist policies in America have never been worse in my lifetime. Enlightened journalism and brave work by volunteers, even at the risk of prosecution and imprisonment, need to be supported.

I’m not a soccer fan and didn’t pay much attention to the defending World Cup championship (USA vs. France match will be televised an hour from this writing) until the occupant of the Oval Office criticized team co-captain Megan Rapinoe for saying almost in passing, “I’m not going to the fucking White House.”

Like other winning athletes who have taken a knee or otherwise protested the policies of the current administration (Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James), Rapinoe is not guilty of the disrespect she is being accused of. She and her teammates, she says, “do not stand for a lot of things the current president stands for” including issues of sexism, racism and LGBTQ rights.

I encourage you to read the article by Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation, who makes the connection between Rapinoe’s stand and that of Muhammad Ali in the 1960s, when his refusal to go to war against the Vietnamese (“they never called me n_ _ _ _r”) destroyed his boxing career.

Quoting Zirin, “Words have power. Truth has power. Athletes, when they use their platform to speak truth to power, can change the world.” This is my simple shout out to the super talented Megan Rapinoe and her teammates Ali Krieger and Alex Morgan for telling it like it is to reporters and then moving on to the business at hand.

Looks like I’ll be eating my lunch and tuning in to women’s soccer for the first time in my life.

I wasn’t sure about posting it here, but I couldn’t help but admire this poster of Megan. Gorgeous.

I admit I saw only one and a quarter of the eight films nominated for Best Picture for the 2019 Academy Awards, but having recently seen The Hate U Give, directed by George Tillman Jr., I’m surprised it didn’t receive a mention—especially because Black Panther, Black KKKlansman and the winner, Green Book, received so much attention (perhaps as a result of the #OscarsSoWhite protest in previous years?)

When a friend told me she steered clear of the film because of the title, I was reminded of what the director said attracted him to the young adult novel by Angie Thomas on which the film was based: its title! Tillman, in the excellent DVD extras, said he immediately understood it as Tupac’s “Thug Life,” the acronym for “The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody.” It inspired him to undertake the making of this film which addresses both obvious issues like racial profiling and police brutality, and more subtle things like code switching (more on this later) and claims by well-meaning allies (like the main character’s white boyfriend) of “color blindness.”

The Hate U Give was extremely well reviewed when it came out. It garnered awards from African American Film Critics Association, Alliance of Women Film Journalists, Black Reel Awards, American Film Festival, Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards and more with best performances for the amazing young actress Amandla Stenberg (Starr Carter), supporting actor Russell Hornsby (Maverick Carter), screenwriter [the late] Audry Wells, and director Tillman. The film also stars Common as a black police officer who finds himself admitting his own differing treatment of white people and people of color. “It’s complex,” he says to his niece Starr when she confronts him. An incident in the film had its real-life counterpart just a few days ago with the exoneration of the Sacramanto police officers who shot and killed unarmed 22-year-old Stephon Clark in March 2018.

When The Hate You Give opens, the camera pans through the front window of a neat, yet humble, house with peeling paint. A father is giving his daughter and son “The Talk.” He tells them in detail what to do if stopped by police: keep your hands visible (as he places his on the dining room table and instructs them do the same; follow all directions; answer questions; and “Don’t move too much because moving makes the police all nervous.” In the interviews featured in the DVD Extras, the actors and author all describe their experiences with getting “The Talk.” One described it as “a part of our culture.” That actor as a boy had taken three buses (starting at 5:30 a.m.) to get from his neighborhood to a private school, and declared getting and giving the talk can be “a matter of life and death.”

Another of the DVD extras explained Code Switching, a term I was not familiar with, and is a topic rarely addressed in the media. It was featured, with humor, in Boots Riley’s 2018 film, Sorry to Bother You, in which the hero gains financial success in telemarketing by using his “white voice.” In The Hate U Give, Starr and her brother live in Garden Heights but attend the all-white private school Williamson Prep. Starr struggles to be herself as she adjusts her language and behavior depending on whether she’s in the ’hood with her family or with her friends from school, including her boyfriend Chris. The conversation the two young people have about their relationship on Prom Night is one of the most enlightening in the film. Starr says, “If you don’t see my blackness, you don’t see me.”

I’m glad my DVD player is holding up so that I can take advantage of material besides the feature that the discs contain. In the case of The Hate U Give, the interviews and commentary by director, actors and author increased my pleasure and expanded my consciousness greatly. I recommend the film highly. In fact, I believe everyone, especially young people, should see it.

I still read the daily newspaper in its inky, crinkly hard copy (later useful for wrapping compost for the yard waste bin and for winterizing garden beds under a layer of leaf mulch). Our local Press Democrat pulls enough from the New York Times and Washington Post to give me intellectual nourishment. So on balance to the devastating National Climate Assessment (released on the down-low the Friday after Thanksgiving) and headlines like “Trump’s Falsehoods Run the Gamut,” I offer glimmers of good news from my November 24 morning paper delivery:

NEW YORK—A state judge in Manhattan ruled Friday that a lawsuit by the New York state attorney general could proceed against President Donald Trump and the Trump Foundation over allegations of misused charitable assets, self-dealing and campaign finance violations during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Big Law” —a benign iteration of “Big Tobacco” and “Big Pharma”— described as a “nexus of power where partners are often plucked for top government posts” has emerged as a force working pro-bono to thwart the Trump administration’s immigration policies. From challenging the Muslim travel ban to fighting to preserve DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals) to assisting nonprofits trying to block the administration’s plan to add a citizenship status question to the next U.S. census, these large firms have been “vocal and visible in pushing back.”

NEW YORK— Corporate lawyers from Paul Weiss (where partners charge more than $1,000 / hour and clients include the NFL and Citibank) have become involved with the ACLU to contact roughly 400 parents deported after being separated from their children at the border. As of this month, the government has released the children of about 260, half to parents in their home countries, half to sponsors in the United States.

Day by day, bit by bit.

We are required to use resources to combat horrible policies instituted by a maniacal Republican party when we should be putting brain power and resources to meet the existential threat climate change is posing today. See “What’s New in the Latest Climate Assessment” and Bill McKibben’s sobering article in The New Yorker, “Life on a Shrinking Planet.”

Still, the good news glimmers, even in a piece on robots being used to replace the shortage of immigrant farm workers. Here’s the last sentence: “Delicate fruit like peaches, plums and raspberries, as well as vegetables like asparagus and fennel, will remain labor intensive for the foreseeable future.”

Backbreaking work though it may be, people—for now—are still needed.

This is a piece I have been writing over time but is too long to publish all at once; a friend suggested “Why not offer it in parts? After all, the story is ongoing.” The dates and times in parens are from my sleep log.
**
When I ask women friends over age 55 if they have trouble sleeping, almost everyone says yes. Hormones? In the menopausal years, night sweats did not trouble me. I experienced only what I called bitch-in-heat “power surges” — embarrassing flushing and burning that started when I was in my late 40s and continued for decades longer that I thought they would, often exacerbated by stress. Mine is not the insomnia in which one can’t fall asleep. No, this is conking out exhausted and waking up three or four hours later. I know 3 a.m. better than midnight.

[12/12: 10:34–2:30; 4:15–8]

My doctor advises keeping a worry journal. “Use the writing to empty your mind and then close the book on it.” Other suggestions? Put Bach Flower Rescue Remedy drops under the tongue. Make the room vary dark. Cover up the clock. Keep your feet warm with a hot water bottle or wool socks. Get a new mattress and pillow. Check out the feng shui of the bed. Have a protein snack (not a big meal) to keep blood sugar levels up until breakfast. Don’t drink caffeine for eight hours before bedtime, or alcohol in the evening, or any liquids two hours before turning in. Get plenty of exercise, but again, not right before bed. Try meditation and breathing techniques: think heavy, think floating, think cool forehead/ warm solar plexus. Take sleep supplements: Valerian, Kava, Melatonin. Read, but avoid a novel that makes you want to keep turning pages. And my favorite—but not always effective—last resort: masturbate. I wish there were a lovelier-sounding word for it.

My walking companion suggests getting up and doing mindless chores like washing dishes or checking email; she once put on a headlamp and pulled weeds in her garden at 4 a.m. I’ll admit to making granola or minestrone in the wee hours, especially in the winter when an oven-warmed kitchen soothes. But leaving my bed usually means I won’t return to it until mid afternoon when I’m compelled to take a cat nap to keep going until the next bedtime.

[12/18: 10–3:30; nap 2–4]

“This is a Manhattan-bound Q train; next stop Prospect Park.” Every twenty minutes all the Brooklyn night, I heard her voice as the doors opened to the subway platform, above ground here at Parkside Station. Even with the 4^th floor apartment windows closed, the automated announcements are loud and clear. It was my first night trying to sleep on the blow-up mattress next to my infant grandson’s crib. Theodore Joseph, only two months old, was sleeping in a bassinette in his parents’ room so I had his space to myself for this Christmas visit. Each time the doors closed and the train pulled away, there followed a predictable clackety clackety clack…pause…clack! Accompanied by steam radiator hiss, it would have been an interesting jazz riff, if not designed to drive the listener mad. I thought of turning on the baby’s “Sleep Sheep” cuddle toy and putting the sounds of ocean waves or momma’s heart beat next to my ear.

[11:30-–2:30, read until 4:45; woke up twice until 6:15]

So goes my sleep diary.

I’m re-reading D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover. As a young teen, I’d found the infamous paperback in my Aunt Marie’s magazine rack and happened to turn to a page where I saw the word “fuck” used with tenderness. It was my first experience of written erotica, the moment I learned that words had the power to make parts of my body ache. Even the lady, Constance, desires the protection and bliss of sleep:

What did it matter who he was, in the daytime world! Now he was the silent male who enclosed her in the phallic circle, and she was like the yolk of the egg, enclosed. She wanted only, only to be perfectly enclosed, to be perfectly comforted, to be perfectly put to sleep.

I’ve known since I was a girl that having an orgasm is a great way to relax enough to fall asleep. And yet, a body next to me after years of solo nights is as effective as black tea chai in the evening. Slumber is banished.

[Midnight – 3:30 only]

I am lying on a satin-covered futon behind a partition made of mirrors. A palm-leafed plant, a low table, and a tall brass candlestick complete the “wall” to my right; on my left, a glass sliding door covered floor-to-ceiling with strings of red crystal beads is open to the outside deck. The man beside me is snoring softly, his mouth closed and turned up at the corners as if smiling at a pleasant dream. I’ve been awake for a while listening to the sounds of wings flapping. Birds come in one window, peck at the pile of seeds dumped on a newspaper in the middle of a once-elegant corduroy sofa, and fly out another window. The air is fresh, but I smell the promise of another day of intense heat.

Moonlight glitters through a lattice of oak branches into this crazy rural hideaway of an old friend, a musician, I’d driven 65 miles to see. It had been 18 years since our last intimacy. We are both nearing sixty with several relationships under our belts, each of us with blonde hair mixed with gray, each sporting a little more belly than when we first met. On this August day, we played like kids on his wave-runner at the lake. I clung to his back like a motorcycle chick as he maneuvered in zigzags and ever-decreasing circles that made me squeal. Spray flew over us, water birds ducked under as we passed.

“When it’s 100 degrees out, you’re happy to fall in a few times,” he shouted after a sliding turn that almost dumped me off.

By some standards, including my own, this old house where I’ve agreed to spend the night, is beyond unconventional and “artistic.” It is unkempt, cluttered, and the bathroom is, for lack of a better description, filthy. The place is littered with sound equipment and numerous guitars, a saxophone and flute in their cases, statues of the Buddha and many-armed goddesses. Ashtrays overflow with remains of the mellifluous “buds” we’ve always enjoyed together, and which he promised would allow me a relaxed night filled with colorful dreams. I partook of the smoke and the sex…all lovely. Yet in spite of many hours of sun and swimming, the dry, mosquito-less weather and not a hint of traffic noise, I fail to fall asleep.

(Continued in next post)