"It's Full of... LESBIANS": On Judging Not Lest We Be Judged

I have felt so ecstatically happy since Election Day that I look back at the column I wrote the week before and can’t believe how sorrowful it seems. In fact so very different in tone it is from the way I have been feeling for these last two weeks I couldn’t bring myself to post it here at the top where it says 'This Week’s Column' so let me copy it below where it will live forever as a post and not disappear and be replaced as the column is each week. It’s not that much fun but it had God in it and also my wonderful old friend and fellow blogger Milton. Here it is:I once bumped into an acquaintance who asked me what college my daughter was hoping to attend the following year and so I told her. “Oh, I would never my daughter go there!” she exclaimed with delicate horror. “It’s full of lesbians!”It’s funny but I felt a wave of kindness toward her and so went and put my hand on her arm: “You must know that isn’t true, Sarah.” (I will call her Sarah.) And even if there are lesbians here and there in colleges, they’re our daughters first aren’t they? Our own young people?”I was calm in those days.I was less calm last week after my conversation with the Postal clerk I will call John. I was sending something to one of our honorary sons, a young man we have long loved and a brand-new homeowner. I asked him if the letter would get there fast; I was worried because it held important documents.He read aloud the name of the city and shook his head. “Tough area,” he said unsmilingly.“What do you mean?”“Full of minorities” he answered with lowered voice.“HE’S A MINORITY HIMSELF JOHN,” I said with a voice not at all lowered. I embarrassed him – made an awkward moment - but for the first time in my life as a careful and courteous female I didn’t care.And so a silence hung between us until our transaction was complete and I had thanked him and turned away.But ever since I’ve been wondering: What is wrong with us all? An hour earlier, in another place of business, a man passing the time of day there said to the shop owner and me, “Barack Obama was handed through college, same as that WIFE!” For some reason tears sprang to my eyes and maybe the shop-owner saw them because self-proclaimed McCain man though he is, he led me aside, and put a hand on my shoulder.“Don’t listen to him; he’s not himself today” he murmured, thus showing kindness to us both.And later he told me that he too is troubled by the high feeling we have seen in this political season now just ended.I think of something I just read by Milton Brasher Cunningham, songwriter, ordained minister, student of history and professional chef. He writes a blog called Don’t Eat Alone where he cites the Biblical verse “Be Ye Kind One to Another” as the idea he most needs to keep in mind.“I would love to say I have mastered the art of kindness and moved on, but it is not so,” he writes.His favorite station was having its fundraiser one day and so he turned the dial to hear something other than the appeals for money and landed on the local talk radio station. “I felt as though I had crossed into a parallel universe. That they presented a view farther to the right of NPR for me was not a surprise; the level of volume and vitriol was, however. These are guys who command huge audiences across the country, or at least that’s my perception. How can anger that severe be so popular?”That is his question. Mine is, What can we do about this?Milton says we can remember this: that “regardless of our political preferences, our fundamental allegiances are to God and to one another. “Not to country. Not to party. Not to ideology…. Not to class or race or even religion. “To God,” he repeats “and to one another.” And that’s a truth I mean to remember from this day forward.

A Whiner Whines

I feel grouchy. I just drove ANOTHER hundred miles to get back to my real house during this my vacation week because this dumb fancy phone of mine broke and they had a new one waiting for me - IF I came home to fetch it and I’m sorry I did - because the foolish NEW phone turned out to also be so defective I couldn’t even open the battery compartment and charge it up and had to spend 45 minutes on the line with some guy in Texas at midnight. And now here I am at the lake again forced to hang around the front door like some cocker spaniel all day so that when they DO go to deliver the thing they can get the signature which they absolutely require … And I wouldn’t mind but see the SUN just came out here and who wants to be inside  waiting for some dumb doorbell to ring under those circumstances? You want to be OUTSIDE and I don’t care what they say about sunhats and the bad moles and a bulging left-cheek gland due to right wing melanoma, when I’m here and it’s my vacation week and the sun is shining I’m like this little guy here; I want to be out there on the deck too, just CATCHIN’ THEM RAYS !

Beware the Old Bait-and Switch

Hmmmmm….so my grandaddy here always used to say you should never say anything in any forum that you wouldn’t want read aloud in the public square. I know I sure believed him. He knew a lot, that child of Irish immigrants born in Famine-time. He came into the world in the 1870s, raised himself up from poverty and went on to become a lawyer, a judge and the recipient of an Honorary Degree from Harvard.

He was also fun and he gave us kids Hershey Bars. My sister Nan and I got to live with him for all of our first decade on the planet. I actually imprinted on him and not just because we looked alike with our black curly hair. We also act alike, I see now that I'm grown: He was always giving uplifting talks for no money at all, at places like the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Chelsea. I also give talks for no money at all. In fact every good thing I do I do for no money because come on, did Jesus charge admission to the Sermon on the Mount? No he did not. 

Mostly though, I know I'm like my grandfather because even on my blog, supposedly a much freer forum than a column I still can’t use bad language or say anything I wouldn’t say in front of a Fourth Grade class. I mean pop culture is tacky enough adn I'm freshly nauseated every time I come across the double-entendres in CBS’s Prime time Two-and-a Half Men for example; sickened by the way they have that child repeating phrases which in the storyline he is purported  not to know the meaning of - all so the audience can have that nice in-group feeling of actually getting the  - wink-wink, nudge-nudge naughty - references. It's one thing if you’re a tired 40-year-old watching the show but you know very well it’s also millions and millions of Second Graders seeing it, and God that makes me mad. If there’s anything more shameful than using a child to sneak your dirty joke under the wire I don’t know what it is.  

So….are there any young’uns out there today? You kids on Facebook maybe? If so hear me now and you males especially: If you ever entertained the hope that associating with a woman was going to be like pulling into some big service station in the sky, well I've got news for you: That hope is all based on the ol' Bait-and-Switch and it's brought to you by people who are trying to sell you stuff: Sneakers and blue jeans. Music and push-up bras. It isn’t real in other words and sure I know there’s that whole pathetic world to whom it may SEEM real – pornography is a growth industry they say - but those are loser-men in the grip of an addiction and do you know what an addiction is? Look at the private life of Bill Clinton over the last 20 years and you tell ME if you think that’s a pretty picture.

Anyway all those images of panting women? they’re fake, kids; the women are acting. In the real world you’re going to be dealing with REAL women and let me tell you on the basis of l-o-o-n-g experience: whether they’re 12 or 112, women are interested in three things in their dealings with others: straight talk, mutuality, and respect. Whether they’re 12 or 112, women – and all the good men – and, praise God, a great many young people too - know that we’re all here to do three things: pick up after ourselves, live in a peaceful manner and bring along the little ones to do the same.

- and now here he is again, papa to my mother and to four other little ones too. coming home from work and happy to be home, in the quiet summer of 1905.