Mermaid Parade, 2009

Coney Island's "denizens of the deep" came out to play again this year at the start of summer. This year's Mermaid Parade began in the rain, but that didn't matter: mermaids don't melt!

They did, however, carry umbrellas and walk a lot faster than in previous years.

Before the parade began, I headed into a bar to use the facilities. There was a long line and I got talking with a gentleman wearing his hair in two pigtails, complete with teal streaks. He also wore a skirt fashioned from a transparent plastic tablecloth adorned with flowers. This was a clever way of keeping his legs dry in the rain, which was coming down pretty hard at that time. In the bar, I spotted Jennifer Miller, the bearded woman who runs Circus Amok (another one of my favorite entertainments).

We met Ferdinand on the bus heading over to the parade, but he was so intent on finding a good spot to stand that he got too far ahead of us. So we didn't stand together this year. However we met him again at the end of the parade.

I recognized a lot of the same faces from last year's parade. We saw the Elvis impersonator, the Parrot Man, the painted ladies, and of course Marty Markowitz, the Borough President, telling us we are all "meshugah" (crazy) and that this was the most undressed parade in town. (I've seen a lot of seminudity at the Pride parades too, though). The Polar Bear Club was there, along with the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, the Brooklyn Bombshells, and so on. There was the usual contingent of pirates, men in kilts, and mermaids with seashell or sea star pasties on their breasts. The costumes were up to their usual standard of wild, wacky, imaginative and sexy.

This year, Barnum and Bailey was there, but I wasn't so thrilled about that. The ASPCA has a lawsuit against them for violating the Endangered Species Act, and the circus's job application asked whether the applicant "is or has ever been" a member of PETA, The Humane Society, the ASPCA and other animal protection organizations. It smacked of the McCarthy Era and when I brought Jason's attention to it, he decided not to apply. Therefore I wasn't so happy to see the circus in the parade, even though the clown noses so many people wore were pretty cute. (Clown mermaids?)

The rain stopped after a while so that made it easier to take photos, but we had competition from the photographers who seemed to stop right in front of me every time a parader stopped and posed. There were so many photos I could have taken if they hadn't blocked my view. Still, I managed to take 930 photos and ruthlessly (!) chopped them down to a mere 291. Onward to the parade in 2010!

Star Trek: The New Movie

This time, it really is the next generation. All of the old actors from the original show have been phased out, except that Leonard Nimoy as the elderly Spock still had a part.

I thoroughly enjoyed this romp through space and time. It was pretty easy to tell who the bad guys were: they had pointy ears, deathly pale faces, and wore ugly, sharp-edged facial tattoos. Clear signs of villainy.

It was amazing witnessing the "birth" of James T. Kirk and then seeing him briefly as an adventurous and rowdy twelve year old rocketing around in an antique car (retooled from the 20th century!). I don't know cars so I would not attempt to describe the model but it clearly dated back to the early 1960's or even before. Most of the new actors fit perfectly into their roles as "baby" Kirk, Spock, Bones, etc. Uhura seemed a little older than the rest whereas on the original show she was either the same age as the captain or younger. Chekhov bore no resemblance to the original actor, but that didn't particularly bother me.

It was a fun movie, despite the destruction of Vulcan and the loss of Amanda, Spock's mother. I wonder if they will be able to go back in time and prevent these tragedies in a future episode. If so, or whatever they decide to do next, I'm up for it.

The last moments of the movie, light playing over the "brand new" original Enterprise, with the words, "Space...the final frontier..." as a voiceover, put a chill right down my baby boomer spine. And Generation Y'er Jason loved it as well. So did Bruce. All three of us recommend it highly.

Crisis: Danger and Opportunity

I've always heard that the Chinese character for "crisis" contains the characters for "danger" and "opportunity." Well, our family is in a crisis. On the Monday before Memorial Day, Bruce arrived at work to learn that the division he has worked at for 23 years is shutting down operations, and almost everyone except for a few family members and high ranking managers is being laid off.

So, we are all looking for work. I am hoping to become more visible as a freelance writer, even as I am seeking part time and full time employment. Bruce is looking for work in inventory control and purchasing, and Jason has many options either in animal care, clerical, or bookkeeping work.

Still, it's a scary proposition because so many well-qualified people have already lost their jobs. I hear unemployment has been extended out to 72 weeks now, but unemployment would not pay all our bills. So, we'd have to deplete savings until someone is back at work and able to support the family.

There's been a psychological toll, of course. We've all had interrupted sleep, and I managed to come down with some sort of bad cold or garden variety flu (not swine, thank goodness). The only up side to this is that I have not left my house since Monday, and therefore haven't spent any money.

This is going to be the real test of whether we can be frugal enough to get through a period of unemployment without sacrificing some fun and games.

What a week!

This has been an exciting week for me. The grant proposal I was writing for The Hetrick-Martin Institute has finally gone out and the initial feedback is good.

I've finally overcome a mild case of writer 's block, and wrote a piece yesterday on the Buffalo Blizzard of 1977, which I experienced as a 22 year-old law student. Do the math, and I've just given away my age! I'm saving that for December as a friend in Franklinville assures me that the Blizzard of '77 is still memorialized each January in the Buffalo newspapers. Maybe they'll be interested in my personal experiences as an out-of-towner who had never experienced anything quite so devastating as a blizzard that shut down a city for two weeks.

Yesterday I submitted two stories to various magazines, and I submitted a third on Monday.

Also yesterday, while I indulged in lunch at Burger King, I received a call from Youth at Risk, inviting me to work for them on a short term prospect research project next week. This is not the first time I've been offered contract work as a result of sending out a resume for a part time job, and it proves that organizations do in fact keep promising resumes on file.

So I am revved and optimistic about what's to come. The weekend should be fun; we are planning to visit the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition's "Color of Hope" art show in Red Hook on Saturday afternoon, and I have the Brooklyn Humanist Community Book Club on Sunday. I wish all my readers a wonderful weekend and week to come.

"The Mermaid Chair"

After reading The Secret Life of Bees I got Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid Chair and read that also. I enjoyed this book just as much.

It had elements of The Bridges of Madison County. Jessie's been married for twenty years and has a grown daughter in college. She's facing a mid-life crisis with her marriage gone stale, and is seeking something she's not sure of. At the same time, her mother, who has been steeped in excessive religiosity since Jessie's father died, has erupted into madness, cutting off her own finger.

Jessie goes to her mother without her husband Hugh, a psychiatrist and a bit of a know it all. The island she grew up on, Egret Island off the coast of South Carolina, has a peculiar custom. There's a monastery there to a St. Senara. Legend has it that this saint was a mermaid who converted to Catholicism, and became a saint. There's a carved "mermaid chair" kept at the church that is carried to the docks and used to bless the fleet on St. Senara's Day.

While she's trying to help her mother and to unravel the puzzle of her mother's self-destructive act, Jessie falls in love with one of the Benedictine monks, Brother Thomas, who has not yet taken his final vows. Jessie and Brother Thomas (Whit) find they have tragedy in common. Jessie's father died at sea when she was nine years old, supposedly blown to bits by a spark from the pipe she gave him. Jessie has lived with a terrible sense of guilt for all these years. Brother Thomas, a former attorney, has joined the monastery to escape from the pain of losing his wife and unborn daughter in a car crash.

The story is permeated by mermaid and siren symbolism and imagery, just as bees permeate the story of The Secret Life of Bees. Jessie, away from her husband and having instigated a separation, begins to find herself, to expand and be the artist she has always longed to be. She realizes that she has pushed herself into too small a space, always putting Hugh and their daughter first and her own amibitions and desires second. She's very similar to Francesca in Bridges in this respect.

The lovers are both "saved and damned" by their connection. Their brief affair forces them both to look at what they really want in life and what they have been hiding from. The mystery of Jessie's father's death is revealed, too, and brings a healing both to her and her mother.

I'm quickly becoming an avid Sue Monk Kidd fan, and I look forward to her future novels.

Bronx Zoo Photos

On April 26th we braved the 92 degree record-breaking temperature and visited the Bronx Zoo. While it was "too darn hot" to see all the attractions, we did manage to see a number of fascinating animals. Here are a few of them.

The Secret Life of Bees

In May our Book Club will discuss Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees." This was a book that surprised me. Some of the works we have read have been way too depressing. This book is a book of hope.

It begins in the summer of 1964, at a critical juncture in the Civil Rights movement. Lily, fourteen years old, has bees living in the walls of her room. Her father, T. Ray, is neglectful and contemptuous of her. Lily's mother is dead, and her death is a source of Lily's shame and guilt, because she remembers just enough to believe she is the one who accidentally shot her mother to death at the age of four.

Their maid, Rosaleen, decides she is going to go and register to vote. That's controversialin the south where they live, and Lily foresees danger. She accompanies Rosaleen and it goes badly. Rosaleen is accosted by three very bigoted men and she retaliates by pouring snuff juice on their shoes. For this insult both she and Lily are hauled off to jail, and T. Ray bails Lily out but punishes her by making her kneel on raw grits. He calls them the "white Marthas" and I don't know what the origin of that expression might be, unless it's a contrast with the black Mary we meet later on in the story.

Lily has two mementos of her mother, a photograph and a portrait of a black Madonna. On the back is written, "Tiburon, SC." Coincidentally (not), her mother's name was Deborah, which means "bee."

Lily helps Rosaleen escape from the hospital where she is recovering from a savage beating by the three men who accosted her. They head to Tiburon just because Lily believes her mother must have once been there. In a grocery store, Lily sees a jar of honey with the same black Madonna on the label, and realizes the connection. She's led by this synchronicity to the home of the Calendar sisters, May, June and August.

August is the beekeeper who manufactures the Black Madonna honey. When Lily and Rosaleen arrive August welcomes them and allows them to stay with the family. She teaches Lily how to help with harvesting the honey and making the beeswax candles August sells to retailers across the country.

June, however, is not so welcoming. Her attitude to Lily is harsh at first. She makes Lily feel like an outsider in a black home when Lily is the one white person. Later, though, her attitude softens.

May, on the other hand, is so sensitive as to be dysfunctional. Anything that upsets her starts her singing,"Oh, Susanna," and running out to her "wall," a homemade "Wailing Wall" where she writes her sorrows and prayers, and puts them between the stones she has piled up there. There was a twin to May, named April, but April could not stand the restrictions and humiliations of racism, and she committed suicide as a teenager.

In this home, Lily begins to flourish as a young woman should. She learns beekeeping and she takes part in religious ceremonies where the sisters and their friends worship the black Mary, a ship's masthead that has become their holy icon. It's a blend of Catholicism and their own, woman-identified worship, that gives them all a feeling of strength and solidarity. One or two men take part in these ceremonies as well.

Lily meets Zach, the student who has been helping August since he started high school, and a tenuous, forbidden love starts to grow between them. In that era, in the deep south, there is no "place or time" for a black boy and a white girl. Yet they do have a few stolen moments, apparently condoned by the other women. Zach is determined to become a lawyer and fight for civil rights, a determination that is only strengthened when he is jailed unfairly for supposedly throwing a bottle or rock at the police.

The bees, their honey, and their secret lives, as they work for and tend the queen,become a metaphor for the family that Lily has discovered. She has found her hive, with the sweetness of love. The black Mary has become her loving mother, the one she has yearned for, the one whose love she has missed out on all her life.

The symbolism of honey, bees, and the black Mary permeate the book. Synchronicities abound, and Lily discovers that her mother did indeed stay at the sisters' home when she ran away from T. Ray. Even Lily's name has a symbolic meaning.

T. Ray tracks her down and tries to force her to come back to the peach farm with him. Legally he has that right, but it turns out that August and the other women are able to convince him to let Lily stay. She's lived through May's suicide, June's marriage, and she's learned the full story about her mother. She's found her hive and her queen bee, and she's ready to become a woman.

I enjoyed this book immensely with its spiritual overtones, with the majesty of the downtrodden, "like royalty among us," as Lily says. Even with Zach, there is a bit of hope because they walk together in the halls of the white high school where he has boldly enrolled, and ignore the taunts and crumpled paper students throw at them.

Honey is a healing agent: that's recently been "discovered" though people closer to the earth have probably known it for centuries. Synchronicity and following her heart leads Lily to Tiburon where she finds her heart's desire.

Read this book!It's not brand new, and I missed it when it was, but if you missed it the first time around now is the time to read and savor it. This seems to be a book designed to be read during the summer heat, set as it is in the sweltering Carolina summertime.

Yopp!

In Dr. Seuss's classic, "Horton Hears a Who," every one of the tiny people on a speck of dust had to shout as loudly as they could in order to be heard by the other animals, who were intent on boiling the flower and locking Horton away in a cage. The infinitesimal Mayor of Whoville raced through the town to make sure everyone was doing his or her part.

It seems that way at first. People are shouting and singing, brass bands playing, drums thumping. But it's not enough. Finally in the very last building the Mayor discovers the smallest of all the Who's, a little child standing alone, doing nothing but playing with a yo-yo.

The Mayor grabs him and delivers a passionate speech. "This is your town's darkest hour!" he tells the little one. Convinced that destruction is near, the child at last opens his mouth and shouts out an amazingly loud, "YOPP!"

That one "yopp" puts it over and the other animals are able to hear that there are in fact sentient beings down there on that tiny dust speck. They are saved and Horton is a hero, instead of being caged as a lunatic.

That was one of my favorite stories as a little girl. Maybe that's why I keep answering the petitions that come to me in emails, why I keep sending my tiny donations and speaking out when I sense injustice.

I'm only one person shouting "Yopp!" but a whole lot of us little Who's got our voices heard last November, and now we at least have an administration that has its ear to the ground, listening for our "Yopps!"

And so I will continue to shout.

Dreams From My Father

I've just finished Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father, a memoir of his childhood, youth and young adulthood. His struggles to come to terms with an absent father, his interracial and international background, and his entry into community organizing, are all here. Obama is an eloquent writer and it's a pleasure to read his descriptions of people, landscapes, and inner thoughts.

What this brings across to me is that President Obama has a handle on life in other nations and other cultures, that most Americans simply can't imagine. He's lived abroad and visited the country of his roots. How many of us have done that? I know when I toured other countries I felt removed from the people there, on the outside looking in at their daily lives. Tourists see museums and national monuments, not the living rooms of the inhabitants. Obama's experiences go so much deeper than that.

He has thought long and hard about his background and his image of his father, mostly compiled of stories told by his other relatives. He's thought long and hard about his racial status and about how to elevate the African American's status in our society.

It's refreshing and encouraging to have a President who can think, examine his own emotions, and write. I'd certainly recommend Dreams From My Father to anyone who would like a greater understanding of our new President.

Rat in a handbag

That sounds scary, but it isn't. I took a walk on Avenue U today, doing various errands. At about East 22nd Street I spotted a woman who looked awfully familiar. I wasn't quite sure though, because she was wearing sunglasses and her hair was shorter than I remembered. She was looking at me also.

She took off her glasses and sure enough, we recognized each other. The woman was Rosemarie, the person in charge of the Animal Laboratory at Lincoln HS. We stood and talked for a number of minutes, catching up on our families and other news. Rosemarie said she was just coming from the veterinarian, that she'd had to take one of the animals from the lab to the doctor.

She pointed to her handbag and said the rat was inside. I asked to see, and she lifted out little Snoopy, an adorable black and white female rat. It seems Snoopy had mites, and had to see the vet. Rosemarie was on her way back to Lincoln where she was going to scrub out Snoopy's cage and herself too, to make sure there were no more mites.

She's so comfortable and loving with those animals. I loved the way she had Snoopy walking up her arm as we were talking. What a surprise and what a treat! I hope we'll get together soon (maybe with Snoopy, too).

"Waiting"

Last night Bruce, Jason and I attended a fundraiser for The Hetrick-Martin Institute, at the Middle Collegiate Church in the East Village. The young people in their after-school POP Arts program put on a musical play called "Waiting," and used it as a fundraiser. They got an excellent turnout and brought in about $2,000 for the agency.

The play was about waiting for HIV results, waiting for pregnancy results, for love, etc. The kids wrote the scenes and the music. We were sitting a little too far back so some of the lines got by me, and I couldn't always see. But it is clear this is a talented group of kids!

It was great to see the staff and exchange greetings. A few people came over and I introduced Bruce and Jason to them. After spending the day helping with grants there, it's great to see the kids who benefit from the work!

Another "Dollar Stretcher" Publication

My latest publication in the online and print magazine, "The Dollar Stretcher," has appeared online. Here's a link to the article, "Out of Work? Volunteer!" The article describes the benefits of volunteering while unemployed, and gives suggestions for people looking for a simpatico organization to volunteer for.

Take the Money Back!

We have money invested with AIG and if they go under, we'll lose it. But I'm willing to lose that money in order to rescue taxpayer money from these greedy pigs.

They create a financial mess and the company is in danger of going under. Instead of getting canned and standing on the unemployment lines with all the innocent people their greed and incompetence put out of work, they're getting bonuses. No, better yet, we're paying for these bonuses. And they're saying they can't break these contracts or AIG will get sued.

Well, hey, so let them get sued! The government needs to scoop back the money that was given to them as a bailout, in an attempt to stop the economy from going under. Instead they used it to line their own pockets. Let's take back the money. AIG will be judgment proof, so who cares if some disgruntled executives...some of whom were responsible for this mess in the first place...get ticked off and sue?

You can't get blood from a stone.

These despicable characters should lose their jobs and they should be held accountable. Maybe we should bring back tarring and feathering, and ride them out of the country on a rail.

Getting those bonuses is the last thing that should happen, whatever it takes to force them to give back the money.

Nothing to be Frightened Of

Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes is a major departure from most of the memoirs I have read recently. It's got to do with his own family life but not in the usual way. He speaks of his parents' personalities and their attitudes towards death, as part of his own musings on the fear of death, and the influence of his own atheism (and more recently in his life, agnosticism) on his fear or lack thereof.

He brings in the stories and thoughts of many other famous writers: Flaubert, Renard, etc. What distinguishes this memoir is that it is not the usual litany of sorrows, the typical dysfunctional family or terrible disease that generally crops up in these books. It's about ideas first and the circumstances of his life second.

I've gotten so tired of the typical "my life was dreadful but I have triumphed" story line. That doesn't mean I am boycotting memoirs but I'd like to see more variety in them. Nothing to be Frightened Of isn't a light book, in fact it is so dense that I am reading it much more slowly than usual. Yet Barnes has a sense of humor about it all and manages to say something funny on almost every page. He's also talking about a subject that haunts us all but almost no one ever speaks about. I appreciate that.

Good News

This past week, the New York Times carried two stories I was happy to read. In "Study Documents the Stress of Waiting for Biopsy Results," a Harvard study reported that women who had to wait more than five days for results of a breast biopsy had stress hormone levels in their blood just as high as if they'd been told they had cancer. Why is this good news? It's good news because, finally, someone is paying attention to the dangers of waiting ridiculously long periods for test results.

The high stress levels could actually impact on a woman's ability to fight off the disease. So being forced to wait is more than just mental torture, it's actually harmful and can affect the outcome. Maybe now that this study has been published, medical labs will be pressured to produce results considerably faster.

Each time I had another test, I had to wait, usually at least a week. Those weeks are spent in a hellish way station. Without the answer, it is impossible to visualize the future. Will life go on as before? Or will it be permanently, perhaps fatally altered? There are times when we can take our minds off the test, but it comes back, again and again. Then comes the moment of the fateful phone call, with the receiver slippery in the sweating palm.

Speeding up the process and getting an answer is much better than prolonged waiting. I hope that this study will provide the incentive that's needed to respect our psyches and our health by getting the results out quickly.

The other good news was in an article about schoolroom furniture. Schoolroom furniture? That's right. The story, "Students Stand When Called Upon, and When Not" describes an experiment in Minnesota classrooms. Children who are wiggly and find it difficult to sit still throughout the school day now have the option of standing up during class. Special desks and stools that adjust to allow for sitting or standing have been placed in classrooms. There are also footrests so the students can stand and swing their feet while they do their lessons.

If only this furniture had been developed 13 years earlier and implemented in New York City classrooms, Jason's first grade might have been a bit easier. His first grade teacher might as well have flown to class on a broomstick. Rumor had it that she'd taught in Catholic school and was used to imposing harsh discipline on little children. Once, a little girl came to school without her bottle of Elmer's glue, because her mother had forgotten to buy it. Jason's teacher made this child stand up for the entire day as punishment.

No one was allowed to sharpen a pencil in her class. So what did you do if it broke? One day another little girl was discovered with pencil shavings on the floor under her desk. Horrors! She was accused, and when she pleaded not guilty, the teacher branded her a liar in front of the class.

She tore up Jason's coloring because he colored outside the lines (and she knew he was receiving physical therapy). After that, Jason lost interest in any arts and crafts. Our friend Richard, on hearing this, said she ought to be horsewhipped. I would have watched that with pleasure.

One of her complaints about Jason, when we met with her for open school night, was that he stood up while working. Such a terrible sin had to be squelched. I can only imagine how she must have badgered him.

I should have gone to the principal but I was afraid if I did she would take it out on Jason. I suppose I should have waited until he was done with first grade and then complained. But I was afraid, also, that she might be assigned to teach a higher grade, and he could end up in her class again. So I never said anything, except directly to her.

Anyway, now, too late for Jason but not too late for the next generation, there's finally some recognition that kids don't have to be sitting down with their little hands neatly folded in order to learn. Some of them learn by moving. Jason wasn't even aware that he was getting out of his seat. Tomorrow's children can just adjust the desk, and sit or stand at their pleasure.

I bet they will learn just fine, and I bet they will be happier and more eager to go to school than the past generations of kids who were forced into a cookie cutter.

That's the good news that was fit to print.

A Demagogue's Task

Today as I walked uptown to the Mid-Manhattan Library I passed the CUNY Graduate Center. A sign in the doorway read, in huge white-on-red lettering, "A demagogue's task is to become as stupid as her audience, so that they will believe they are as clever as she is."

I don't know the origin of this quote but it was reproduced in such size that it struck me as well worth repeating here.

Shame on the NY Post

The New York Post has a long history of tasteless and offensive reporting. I remember the headline, "Headless Body Found in Topless Bar." Ugh! This time, though, they have gone over the line.

A few days ago, a chimpanzee that was kept as a house pet and "acted human" went berserk and mauled a woman who was a guest at the home. The chimp's owner tried to stop it by stabbing it but had to call in the police, and the animal was shot.

As an aside, I don't think it's morally right or smart to keep chimpanzees or other wild animals as pets. This one dressed and bathed himself, drank from a glass and watched TV, but no matter how much he appeared to be "tamed," wild animals are dangerous, and it's cruel to try to fit them into our lives and then have to destroy them when they act like the wild creatures they are.

In any case, the Post published a cartoon showing two policemen with guns drawn standing over a dead chimp, and they're saying, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill!"

Now although they tried to deny it, it is obvious that the dead chimp is supposed to be President Obama, who had just signed the stimulus bill. There's no excuse for something like this. It is racist, disgusting, and completely over the line.

I'm in favor of freedom of speech, but President Obama was elected by a popular majority and an electoral landslide, and he deserves some respect. Besides, this was practically an incitement to violence. Heads should roll over this. There was a protest at the Post headquarters today. I thought of going to it but didn't quite get myself moving fast enough, and at the time when I should have been getting on the subway I was still at the bank taking care of an errand.

I hope the Post receives millions of protest letters. What they did was an abomination.

Thoughts on "1984"

Recently I rediscovered a longstanding fascination with Orwell’s famous dystopian novel, “1984.” I must have been fairly young when I first read it, maybe not more than ten or eleven years old. Some of it must have sailed straight over my head, just as the other adult novels I read at the time did. Still, I understood enough to compare certain aspects of Orwell’s nightmare vision with the world I saw around me.

At that time I was in junior high school. Although it was a public school and no physical punishment was allowed, our lives were closely regimented. The Assistant Principal, Miss Cahill, was a tyrant worthy of the Thought Police.

She was a blue-haired old lady, in the days when rinses intended to spruce up gray hair turned a woman’s tresses to an unmistakable and unpalatable shade of blue. Rumor had it that she ran her English class like a prison camp. Everyone in the class had to click his pen at exactly the same moment. I guess she’d never recovered from the gradual demise of the fountain pen. If a pen or pencil dared to roll off a desk during Miss Cahill’s lesson, the resulting sound as it clattered to the floor would earn its owner a trip to detention.

I had the good fortune never to end up in her classroom, but Miss Cahill presided over the cafeteria in the same arbitrary and capricious manner that befits all petty tyrants. When she wanted silence, she put two fingers in the air, and everyone else had to put their fingers in the air also. Had I been slightly older, I would have raised only one finger, the one most fraught with emotional significance. As it was, I frequently substituted the Nazi salute. No one ever noticed.

Miss Cahill punished students for their “attitudes,” driven by some inchoate gut feeling that they were not sufficiently submissive to her orders. Time and again I heard her assign students detention for having the wrong look on their faces or because she didn’t like their “attitude.” Orwell had a Newspeak word for this: Facecrime.

I wrote a revolutionary tract urging the students to rise up and fight back, to reclaim our rights to have our faces look any way we wanted, and to talk throughout the lunch period instead of a meager 15-20 minutes until we got the flying fickle finger salute of silence. But I never distributed it. Copying wasn’t so easy back then: you had to use a mimeograph machine or layers of carbon paper in your typewriter. It wasn’t worth it to me. However I rejoiced when once, Miss Cahill pushed us too far and the students fought back, shouting and jumping up on the tables in defiance. We were squelched, but like Winston Smith, I felt for a moment that perhaps the great rebellion was going to succeed. Miss Cahill did flee the cafeteria crying, her hair-trigger nerves shot by our loud defiance. But, as in “1984” our revolt failed.

In any case, I had to recognize that no matter how much Miss Cahill resembled an agent of the Thought Police, the stakes were not nearly as high.

For years, I misinterpreted the ending of the book, believing that Winston was shot to death right there in the Chestnut Tree Café. It took a long time to realize that although physical death was not far away now that he’d fully capitulated, the bullet spoken of was a metaphorical one. His soul and his capacity for independent thought had been blown out as surely as if by a bullet.

So why, then, is such a depressing novel so fascinating to me? I enjoy the beginning, Winston’s rebellion and his affair with Julia. Our modern world has turned out partially like “1984” with a large helping of “Brave New World” added to the mix.

Today, we can be observed through the Internet. There are cameras galore in public places, watching our every move. We’re given the impression that they are used to protect us from terrorism and criminality. To an extent I am sure that’s true but the potential for misuse is huge.

Cookies and spyware watch our activities online. The government in recent years has tapped phone lines with no warrants, and has demanded that bookstores reveal the buying habits of their patrons. A new technology observes you as you watch advertising and adjusts the ad to your gender and age. We’re told that the technology can’t yet recognize the individual watching but is that really true?

Winston would surely find a great deal of modern technology to be frighteningly familiar and even more advanced in some of its spying capabilities.

Falsification is of course possible as evidenced by the epidemic of identity theft. Could the government misuse our personal information? Sure it could.

Can we protect our privacy? At this point, probably not.

As for the affair between Winston and Julia, I don’t see evidence in our modern world that any governmental entity desires to break down the emotional ties and loyalties between friends and family. In the private sector, though, our family lives have often come into conflict with the demands of our jobs. Doesn’t it break down family ties when employees are expected to work overtime, travel anywhere and everywhere, and miss family events in order to give all of their energies to the company? They can’t arrest us or torture us, but they certainly can deprive us of a means to make living, and that’s a serious enough consequence, especially now.

In “1984” sexuality was to be denied and the ultimate goal was to destroy it, abolishing the orgasm and breaking the family unit up so that children would be artificially conceived and then raised by the State. The artificial production of children was achieved in Brave New World but instead of abolishing the sex urge the power elite chose to allow it but to trivialize it. Loyalty to any one person would be “bad for production” and so people were strongly encouraged to be promiscuous, having as many partners as possible and viewing them all as simply recreational companions to whom they owed no exceptional loyalty. In a sense our own society has taken that route, without it being necessarily planned as a way to keep workers “stable” and untroubled by any family stress.

However, romance, love and joyful sex certainly do exist in our world of 2009, and Winston and Julia would be delighted to learn that this is not a crime, at least not in America. There are other places where people are not free to choose their own partners, and where sexual love with a “wrong” partner can be punished by death, such as in the case of “honor killings” of women and girls who are even suspected of illicit or forbidden involvement with men.

So, they would have their work cut out for them, bringing the importance of individual freedom and self-determination to the front and center.

I may have seen the “1984” movie before but I barely remembered it, and it seems a false memory now because I seem to recall watching it in the apartment where I grew up. It isn’t possible that I saw the 1984 version there because we moved out in 1971. I may have seen the 1954 version with Peter Cushing. I watched that one on YouTube the other day and found it dreadful. It was dated and so old-fashioned. The lovers never removed an article of clothing (except for the checkered sash Julia wore- which was supposed to be red, according to the book). The acting was substandard and the whole thing had the feel of a primitive science fiction movie. In fact, that’s what it was.

By contrast, I loved the 1984 version with John Hurt and I have already watched it several times on YouTube. This one was filmed during the exact time period of the book’s setting, from April to June 1984. Clever indeed! Moreover it is extremely true to the book. Everything was dingy, gray and half broken down, just as Orwell described. Winston’s flat in “Victory Mansions” was one step above a slum. No one decorated their homes with anything the least bit personal, so their living quarters were completely soulless.

John Hurt did an excellent acting job. He was completely believable as Winston. His face had a sad and vulnerable look to it even when he was happy with Julia. While not handsome he had a peculiar brand of beauty (as Winston said of the immense prole woman hanging out her wash beneath the secret room, that was his style of beauty).

It’s a fascination I don’t fully understand but I have returned to it from time to time. Could anyone have stood up to the horrors of Room 101? And once the words were spoken, were they really so indelible? Could love be squashed so easily? It’s true that young people in cults have often been brainwashed to believe that their parents are evil, just trying to lure them away from some obscure “truth” with their protestations of love. So maybe it is possible. However, deprogramming suggests that the process is reversible. Could Winston and Julia have been deprogrammed to rediscover their love for each other? It’s possible, but in their world, no one had any interest in doing so.

Just as much as the day it was published, and maybe more so in our modern world where the internet sees all, “1984” stands as a warning and a call to resist the forces that would find it convenient and rewarding to crush the human spirit while making us believe we are living a “new, happy life.” May we always recognize encroachments on our freedom to love, freedom to think and feel, and freedom to remember the past as it was. May we always remember, that 2+2=4.

"I Screwed Up"

That's what President Obama said, regarding his supporting Daschle's nomination. Well, maybe he did screw up, maybe Daschle and a couple of others weren't vetted as closely as they could have been.

But I'm proud of the President even if he did "screw up." That's because he's a big enough man and a strong enough man to admit he made a mistake. Oh, sure, President Bush admitted to a few mistaken decisions as he was leaving office. That doesn't exactly help all the people who were harmed by those wrong decisions during his eight years in the presidency.

In President Obama's case, this mistake happened only two weeks after he took office. So he's out there admitting he erred, saying baldly, "I screwed up," without dodging behind excuses. What a refreshing change from the past eight years! In fact, I don't think I've ever heard a POTUS say right out that he screwed up, right in the middle of the problem.

By trying to take accountability to a higher level, our new President puts himself in a more vulnerable position than any past president has ever taken. Will he screw up again in some other way? Probably he will. There's no real preparation for this position. It is unique in the world, and the on-the-job training is as rigorous as it gets. From day one, he's expected to hit the ground running, and never more than today with all the problems he's inherited.

A leader who can say, "I screwed up," deserves respect. We can only learn from our mistakes if we are willing to own up to them. Here's a leader who isn't pretending to be a demigod. He's showing character instead of bluster. Good for him!

Hire America

I've just read that the banks receiving the biggest bailout money have been applying for the most visas to bring in foreign workers to their employ. This has been going on for at least six years and probably longer. The foreign workers are filling top spots and earning more than $90,000 a year on average. That's more than twice the earnings of an average American household. And those are the very people who got those outrageously large bonuses, that President Obama spoke out against.

This is just wrong in so many ways. At a time when so many Americans are out of work, why are we allowing this to go on? If outsourcing to other countries is something the President wants to see discouraged, then surely "insourcing" of foreigners into the country for the express purpose of snapping up American jobs should be firmly discouraged as well.

The ironic part of this is that the reason these foreigners are being hired is not that they are more competent than American workers, but that these companies find ways to pay them less than what they would have to pay their U.S. born and bred counterparts. Now, I personally can't find myself weeping for the unfairness of earning "only" $90K, but there it is: we're spending our taxpayer money bailing out these banks that have mishandled the trust we put in them, and they are returning the favor by putting Americans out of work, every which way they can.

I want to see a law, plain and simple. No more outsourcing. No more favoring foreign workers over Americans. If two people apply for a job and have equal qualifications, the American citizen gets the job. Period, end of story. Why should people who have worked here and paid taxes their whole lives be put out of work and maybe out on the street, so that companies can pay foreigners less?

Oh, and those equal qualifications must NOT have anything to do with bilingualism. That should no longer be permitted to be a job qualification. Yes, I'm in favor of our next generation, the little ones, learning a second language. But which language are they going to learn? Here where I live, you can't get a job unless you speak Russian, or Chinese (Mandarin or Cantonese...maybe both), or Korean, or....you get the picture. And once they learn a second language thoroughly, meaning from pre-kindergarten onward, then it might be fair and equitable to allow bilingualism to be a job qualification.

But not now. No young adult of working age today who was born to English-speaking, American parents and educated in our public schools can possibly compete with a native born speaker or a child of native speakers. We have to level the playing field here, and the only way to do it is to abolish bilingualism for at least the next 18 years, and then institute foreign language as a subject taught from pre-kindergarten forward.

Otherwise, the foreigners will pour in, destroy our standard of living by accepting lower wages, and take away all our jobs because they are "bilingual" (some of them marginally able to speak English still get jobs requiring them to speak on the telephone) and we, victimized by our school systems, are not.

In England, workers are striking and demanding that jobs be given to native Englishmen and Englishwomen before foreigners. Good for them! We need a similar outcry here.

So here's my battle cry: buy American, as much as possible, hire Americans first, and take bilingualism out of the job descriptions!