Jonathan P. Baird

This book is long overdue. It places the American socialist tradition inside American history. It explores chapters that are missing from most conventional history books while connecting some interesting dots. The book promotes a sense of the continuity of a long-standing tradition that has not been sufficiently appreciated.

Ignorance, distortion for political purpose, and misunderstanding are rife when it comes to American socialist history. The decibel level is so high and there are so many axes to grind that clarity has been a casualty.

As a member of the 60’s generation of leftists, I think that we have lacked a sense of history about the generations of leftists who have preceded us. It does seem like every generation of American leftists has to start over without a shared base of knowledge and experience. The absence of even a vibrant American labor movement contributes to the national void. The history of American socialism is and has been invisible for a long time.

Nichols’ book helps, in a small way, to fill that emptiness. He shows the long history of socialist tradition in America which is largely unknown. Unless you are a devoted student of history, there is no way you will know about the history Nichols unearths. As I think Gore Vidal said, we live in the United States of Amnesia. It strikes me as quite the contradiction that a country founded in revolution could have so impoverished and weak a radical tradition after its founding. Which does lead to the story…

Nichols begins with Emma Lazarus of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” fame. Although I knew Lazarus’s poem graces the Statue of Liberty, i did not know she was a secular Jewish radical. Nichols writes:

“The story of Emma Lazarus, the whole story, is an important one for contemporary Americans. It reminds us that the authors of “the American credo” were not free market capitalists preaching laissez faire mantras of “eat or be eaten”, “survival of the fittest”, “close the borders” or “government is the problem”. In fact, the country founded in radical opposition to monarchy, colonialism and empire, has from its beginnings been home to socialists, social democrats, communists and radicals of every variation. Criticisms of capitalism were not “imports”  brought to our shores by the tired, the poor, the huddled masses of ancient lands. They were conceived of, written about and spoken by Americans long before Karl Marx or Fidel Castro or Nelson Mandela or Hugo Chavez put pen to paper or grasped the sides of a lectern. Emma Lazarus was not, as is often thought, an immigrant; she was a fourth-generation American whose family roots planted in the soil of America before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.”

Nichols shows that Lazarus was inspired by Henry George, a utopian political economist and social philosopher. She openly acknowledged the influence of socialist ideas in her writing. I think it is worth it to go back and take a look at Lazarus’s most famous poem:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Nichols then goes back to early American history. He particularly focuses on Tom Paine, the bad boy international revolutionary. The Paine that Nichols presents was a secular cosmopolitan intellectual. In his writings, Paine demonstrated a principled concern for egalitarianism and social justice. Paine proposed schemes akin to Social Security, child welfare laws, and public housing  – all programs typically bemoaned by conservatives.

As has been true with other great radicals after they die, the legacy of Paine is something of a political kaleidoscope. People of whatever ideological stripe see what they want to see and claim him as a kindred spirit. Witness Glenn Beck’s book invoking Paine. There is black humor in watching Beck urge his followers to read Paine when Beck appears to have no grasp of Paine’s writings. The Becks of his day hated Tom Paine.

Paine was particularly an inspiration to Abraham Lincoln, Eugene V. Debs, and later FDR. To quote Debs: ” The revolutionary history of the United States and France stirred me deeply and its heroes and martyrs became my idols. Thomas Paine towered above them all.”

Nichols covers much ground in his overview of the 19th and early 20th century. I learned about Fanny Wright, the “great red harlot” of American radicalism in the late 1820’s and early 1830’s. In her day, Wright was a famous abolitionist, a socialist and a feminist. Walt Whitman adored her. In reminiscing about her to his friend Horace Traubel, Whitman said:

“In those days, I frequented the anti-slavery halls in New York – heard many of their speakers – people of all qualities, styles – always interesting, always suggestive. It was there I heard Fanny Wright…a woman of the noblest make-up whose orbit was a great deal larger than theirs – too large to be tolerated for long by them: a most maligned, lied-about character – one of the best in history though also one of the least understood…Her views were very broad – she touched the widest range of themes – spoke informally, colloquially. She published while there The Free Inquirer, which my daddy took and I often read. She has always been to me one of the sweetest of sweet memories: we all loved her: fell down before her: her very appearance seemed to enthrall us.”

Later Nichols covers the influence of the 1848 European revolutionaries on Lincoln; Horace Greeley and the national influence of the progressive paper, the New York Tribune; and the founding of the Republican Party which initially was anti-slavery and was not economically conservative.

Probably most interesting was the era when American socialists did have genuine political clout. Nichols highlights the successes of the Socialist Party in winning elections and in administering major cities. By 1912, the Socialist Party had elected 34 mayors, along with city councils, school board members and officials in 169 cities from Butte Montana to New York City.

Nichols describes “sewer socialism”, the brand of socialism that was focused on clean and local government. He notes the first Socialist elected to Congress was Victor Berger of Milwaukee. Berger held his seat in Congress from 1911 to 1929. Socialists of that era hoped to make a reputation for absolute honesty and clean government.

At the national level, Nichols recounts the presidential campaigns of Debs and Norman Thomas. Debs made 5 runs between 1900-1920 and Thomas made 6 attempts between 1928-1948. Debs pulled close to a million votes in 1912, 6% of the total cast.

While it would be easy to dismiss the Socialists as a failed movement (particularly in light of present irrelevance), Nichols appreciates the role of Socialists as authors and promoters of new reform ideas. Many of the ideas pioneered by socialists like unemployment compensation, old-age pensions, union rights, jobs programs, minimum wage etc were eventually taken up and adopted by Democrats during the New Deal and after. Any calculation of movement failure should be balanced against the success of the movement as progenitor of reform ideas.

It is ironic, almost ridiculous, that President Obama would draw fire from the Right for being a socialist. Words lose meaning when a mild reformer like Obama can be misidentified as a socialist. By any rational standard, Obama is not even close to being a social democrat. Unlike FDR, who was concerned about appealing to his left flank which had some power, Obama has not shown that concern. Thus you get Rahm Emanuel and his famous comments about liberals and progressives criticizing Obama as “f-ing retards”.

Because we live in an era when the ideology of “government is the problem” is so strong, Nichols wants to refute that perspective and show how narrow and ahistorical it is. Nichols writes:

“This country, which was founded on a radical interpretation of enlightenment ideals, which advanced toward the realization of those ideals with an even more radical assault on the southern aristocracy, which was made more humane and responsible by the progressive reform; the New and Fair Deals and the war on poverty and inequality of the first three quarters of the twentieth century is now tinkering around the edges of the challenges posed by the twenty-first century.”

Nichols is concerned that public policy entertain a full range of ideas, including reform ideas from the left.

I do think it is fitting that Nichols gives so much play to Eugene Debs. He was and remains the outstanding figure of American socialism. Out of hard experience, Debs came to see the need for a workers’ political party. But Debs also defended liberal democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law.

It is a tragedy of our time that America lacks even a credible social democratic party, let alone a socialist party. Without those perspectives, economic circumstances worsen and no one stands up strongly for working people. Whether the issue is economic inequality, jobs for our unemployed millions or climate change, I think it is fair to say the policy responses by both major parties are weak at best and grossly inadequate.

Since Nichols invokes Walt Whitman as a rebel sympathetic to socialism and since Whitman is a favorite of mine, I will end with a Whitman poem  that is a favorite of mine. It seems apropos.

To A Foil’d European Revolutionaire

Courage yet, my brother or my sister!
Keep on – Liberty is to be subserv’d whatever occurs;
That is nothing that is quell’d by one or two failures, or any
  number of failures,
Or by the indifference or ingratitude of the people, or by any
  unfaithfulness,
or the show of the tushes of power, soldiers, cannon, penal
  statutes.

What we believe in waits latent forever through all the
  continents,
invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light,
  is positive, and composed, knows no discouragement,
Waiting patiently, waiting its time.

(Not songs of loyalty alone are these,
But songs of insurrection also,
For I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world
  over,
And he going with me leaves peace and routine behind him,
And stakes his life to be lost at any moment.)

The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent
  advance and retreat,
The infidel triumphs, or supposes he triumphs,
The prison, scaffold, garrote, handcuffs, iron necklace and
 lead-balls do their work,
The named and unnamed heroes pass on to other spheres,
The great speakers and writers are exiled, they lie sick in
  distant lands,
The cause is asleep, the strongest throats are choked with
  their own blood,

The young men droop their eyelashes toward the ground
  when they meet;
But for all this Liberty has not gone out of the place, nor
  the infidel enter’d into full possession.

When liberty goes out of a place it is not the first to go, nor
  the second or third to go,
It waits for all the rest to go, it is the last.

When there are no more memories of heroes and martyrs,
And when all life and all the souls of men and women are
  discharged from any part of the earth,
Then only shall liberty or the idea of liberty be
  discharged from that part of the earth,
And the infidel come into full possession.

Then courage European revolter, revoltress!
For till all ceases neither must you cease.

I do not know what you are for, (I do not know what I am
  for myself, nor what any thing is for,)
But I will search carefully for it even in being foil’d,
In defeat, poverty, misconception, imprisonment – for they
  too are great.

Did we think victory great?
So it is – but now it seems to me, when it cannot be help’d,
  that defeat is great,
And that death and dismay are great.

Imagine this situation: you are a young person of 20 and you have started experiencing increasing symptoms of weakness, fatigue, and paralysis. The symptoms are periodic, not consistent. While the symptoms come and go, they can be so severe that you have almost died on a number of occasions. You have lived through times when you could not eat and you could barely breathe. You have been on and off life support. However, your doctors cannot find anything wrong with you. They have run all possible tests and they have no explanation or diagnosis for your condition. The doctors think the illness is in your head.

This is the story that Chloe Atkins describes in her memoir, “My Imaginary Illness”. Having lived through years of medical hell, she achieves some measure of justice and payback by describing her medical experience. The book is an important contribution about a common but overlooked problem: how we treat individuals who suffer from medical conditions that cannot be diagnosed.

Atkins shows that all too often such individuals are treated with hostility by the medical world. They are blamed for their illness. Ironically, as Atkins’ medical condition worsened, she became more vilified by doctors. She points out how the medical world’s response to her was largely to assume she was a con artist out for some type of secondary gain. They could not explain her so the problem had to be her.

For over 10 years, Atkins’ condition was dire. At points, she became quadriplegic. Because her stomach could not absorb nutrients, she required intravenous feeding. She was bagged and ventilated repeatedly during the course of her illness. Still, she was treated as a psychosomatic head case patient and a black sheep. She had a medical chart that read like a rap sheet. Her reputation preceded her and her prior medical chart history colored perceptions of her illness when she needed to seek out care in new medical settings. It was so hard for Atkins that she seriously considered suicide rather than having to deal with yet another hostile medical establishment.

Fortunately though, there were some physicians, nurses, and therapists who were not so ready to condemn. While Atkins did not perfectly fit diagnostic criteria for a rare illness, myasthenia gravis (MG), she did have an atypical presentation of that illness. She got remarkably better when she finally started receiving MG treatment from her neurologist.

The book raises good questions about how the medical world treats people who are difficult to diagnose. Why are doctors so quick to judge negatively? Why the intolerance for ambiguity? Why are doctors so ready to write off a patient as draining precious medical resources  when that person has an unusual or highly complex problem that may be poorly understood?

If an illness is perceived as functional, not organic, the ill person is often seen by doctors as a faker. Atkins shows how doctors who believed she was ill were ridiculed by senior members of her medical team. With technology allowing the sharing of much more medical history (a good thing and potentially very helpful), extensive chart misinformation can lead essentially to slander of a difficult patient.

The book raises other good points about our health care system. There is an expectation, almost a conceit, that the medical world has an answer for everything. Atkins’ book shows how untrue that is and it implicitly makes the point that there is still much that cannot be explained. The book is a reminder to place our view of illness into a historical perspective. Medical care in 2011 has reached a certain plateau in its dynamic evolution. It is not what it was in 1950 or 1850 and it is not what it will be in 2100 (assuming we as a species make it that far).

Medical care takes place in a 2011 social, political, and economic context. What we see as “the norm” is the product of a confluence of factors that includes limited financial resources and our largely private market system. While many tout quality of care and say our health care system is the best in the world, Atkins  shows how dysfunctional care can become when you toss together ill-defined symptoms, troubled family situations and perceived non-compliance with treatment.

The last part of Atkins’ book is a critical commentary on her care written by a psychiatry professor, Brian David Hodges M.D. As an example of the historical nature of medicine, Dr. Hodges recalls a poster from the 1950’s picturing a doctor promoting a brand of cigarettes. The Hodges section serves as as an analytical  counterpoint to Atkins’ narrative.

Having had much recent personal family experience over the last two years with the health care system, I do have to say that a critical stance toward quality of care is well-justified. The succession of treating doctors with seemingly no continuity of care; the objectification of patients who are scrutinized at a distance by a medical herd giving their medical gaze; and the overall dehumanization of patients with a failure to see those patients as alive, aware, emotional, needy creatures – all these contribute to a highly alienated situation for a patient.

Both my parents died in a hospital. While they both lived long lives, I do not feel good about the circumstances of their death. We never got a diagnosis about what was wrong with my dad until after he died. That might have been okay but doctors came and went like ships passing in the night. Communication was pitiful although my family members were trying to find out what was happening. Being there, I could not say my dad had a doctor, just a collection of medical personnel none of whom appeared to spend any time with him. My dad went out in the usual hooked-up-to-machines way we die.

My mom is another story. I was not physically present at the time of her death but I do feel bad care helped to kill her. I learned about her experience from my brother Rob. My mom was overmedicated and severely depressed. I have no way of knowing but I suspect her medications were bungled. For weeks her medications were being adjusted by a variety of doctors with god only knows how much familiarity with her chart. I had seen my mom for a few days two weeks before she died. She seemed improved at the time and I thought she might go home soon. She had spent the previous four months either in rehab or at hospitals with a brief stint at home. She also had no continuity of care I could ascertain. At the end her medical problems included congestive heart failure and diabetes. She had been on Prednisone and insulin. Ironically, my mom used to say that she believed mismanagement of her mom’s medications had killed her.

Atkins’ book has particular relevance from a legal standpoint. I would say it is hardly unusual to find claimants who present with both subjective complaints of pain and no or little objective evidence to support the degree of impairment claimed. As someone with past experience representing disability claimants and with current experience evaluating claims, I would note such a circumstance can provoke a wide array of responses.

“My Imaginary Illness” is, in effect, a brief supporting open-mindedness, tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity , empathy, curiosity, and respect for the dignity of the claimant. It is a corrective to the world-weary, cynical perspective that automatically assumes subjective pain claimants are malingerers. Whether you are a doctor, a lawyer, a judge or a consumer of health care, I would say “Read this book.”

It is fast approaching two years since my dad died. It will be two years on May 4. I wanted to write a small remembrance to honor him.

I remember my dad in his hospital bed a few days before he died. He had gotten no clear diagnosis from an ever changing parade of doctors about what was wrong but it was clear he was not doing well. Only after his death did we find out he had adenocarcinoma. He had been having severe back pain for a few months which had masked what was really going on. He was hooked up to a variety of machines in the technological way we escort people out of this life.

In that room at Lankenau Hospital were, among others, my sister, my mom and my Aunt Arline. Almost unbelievably, they are all dead now. (Sadly my Aunt Arline, my dad’s sister, died this last week)

In a private moment in that hospital room, my dad pulled me aside. He said he did not think he was going to make it. He asked me to take care of my mom in his absence. I tried to reassure him. Even then, it was very hard for me to imagine the world without my dad in it. He was that big a presence.

Stepping back, I want to recognize his devotion and loyalty to family. He was unfailingly loyal to my mother. I do see my dad as an incredibly positive role model. He had his faults (who does not) but it was almost as if he had some secret knowledge about the value and worth of consistent caring.

My parents built a world around their love and it held up strongly. By any standard, almost 60 years is a good run. The example stands as one object lesson of a good, well-lived life. Which is not to say that they did not encounter much adversity together. My brother Richard’s death at age 2; prolonged business adversity, including Chapter 11; my sister’s illness – and that only touches a few items on a longer hit parade. I think the adversities brought them together though and increased both of their senses of empathy for suffering.

I would note that my dad did frequently compliment my mom. It could have been about her cooking (she was amazing!), a golf shot she hit or some other random act of kindness she performed. He lavished praise and there was a sweetness about these proclamations.

His kindness was unusual. As long as I can remember,  this Jewish man gave Christmas presents, usually $25, to a wide variety of people, especially workers at the Wynnewood House where he and my mom lived for many years. He did this way after he had the money to afford that type of generosity. I think my mom thought it was mishuganah but that was my dad. It was out of control and it never stopped.

I think of William Blake: “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” Probably not the sense in which Blake meant it but it rings true to me.

I am prompted to offer up three poems I want to share.

Yom Kippur     by  Yehuda Amichai

Yom Kippur without my father and mother
is not Yom Kippur

From the blessing of their hands on my head
Just the tremor has remained like the tremor of an engine
That didn’t stop even after their death.

My mother died only five years ago,
She is still being processed
Between the offices above and the papers below.

My father who died long ago is already resurrected
In other places but not in my place.

Yom Kippur without my father and without my mother
Is not Yom Kippur.
Hence I eat to remember
And drink not to forget
And sort out the vows
And catalogue the oaths by time and size.

In the day we shouted Forgive us,
And in the evening we cried Open to us.
And I say forget our sins, forget us, leave us alone
At the closing of the gate when the day is done.
The last ray of the sun splintered
In the colored glass window of the synagogue.
The ray of the sun is not splintered,
We are splintered,
The word “splintered” is splintered.

—————————————————-

All That Could Go Wrong      by   E. Ethelbert Miller

now fills my life.
The face of my father
is now my own.

My hands now show
their age and not what
they have built

I cannot sit at the
kitchen table without
thinking of him.

Head bent over his
meal and feeling the
heat of it against his brow.

How hungry I was to know
what he felt and how afraid
of my father’s hunger I became.

A man in my own house
with my wife’s back to me.
In bed where I
 might have

slept alone if it was not
for some sense of duty
to death or marriage or

whatever comes next in this
life which kills so slowly
and every breath is his breath.

——————————————————–

Dirge Without Music    by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the
hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, – but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter,
the love, –
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and
curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not
approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in
the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Could there be anything better than joyriding through rural Alaska on a beautiful spring Saturday? I had CDs of Bruce and the E Street Band from a live 1975 concert at Hammersmith Odeon London (my favorite Springsteen) and 40 Licks from the Stones. Not bad.

I had to drive up to Willow, Alaska. That is almost 70 miles north of Anchorage. Willow is the place where the Iditarod actually starts. What with the weather being picture perfect, I figured it would be a great chance for Denali viewing. After my Willow stop, I headed farther north.

Once you get past Eagle River, a suburb of Anchorage, the road is reminiscent of Route 4A, north of Wilmot, New Hampshire. 4A is a moose alley: a two lane road surrounded by expansive woods. You know the moose are there. You don’t know when they will jump out and surprise you. The road north of Anchorage features moose warning signs.

The major difference with 4A is the mountain factor in Alaska. The mountains are numerous, bigger, hugely snowcapped, and strikingly vertical. I am reminded of the old saying: size matters.

As an easterner, I am conscious of the scale of things Alaskan. Alaskans are conscious of it too. In the summer at the Anchorage Farmers Market, there is a guy running a booth selling paraphernalia contrasting how little Texas is next to Alaska. He sold a teeshirt with a scaled map of Texas superimposed easily inside the boundaries of Alaska. Texas is teeny-weeny!

Back on the road, I did want to mention that you pass through Wasilla before you get to Willow. While Wasilla is famous for things Palin, I would suggest it should be better known for nearby Hatcher Pass. Last summer with my friends Cliff and Theresa, we went for a hike there. Hatcher Pass has stunning views. It would be a great place for a family hike.

Wasilla itself looks dumpy from the road. It features plastic urban sprawl with shockingly poor quality housing visible from the highway. I guess it should not be surprising that the media has lavished so much attention on the fascinating superstar and zero attention on the living conditions of other lesser mortals who inconspicuously inhabit the same regional turf.

Driving north at around 100 miles from Anchorage, you hang a right for Talkeetna. Fourteen miles later you approach the outskirts of the downtown. On the left outside town is a turnout, Talkeetna Bluff, which is an awesome site for Denali viewing.

I hit the jackpot for a clear day. Denali is massive and dominant. There is something stirring about mountains, especially those of breathtaking size, and the trip was worth it just to see the Alaska range. That range includes Mt. McKinley (Denali) 20,320 feet, Mt. Hunter 14,573 feet, and Mt. Foraker 17,400 feet.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to see Mt. Everest but there was an unworldly shimmering blue background to the giant white peaks which jutted up across the skyline. Denali is the highest mountain in North America with the greatest vertical rise of any mountain on earth. And I would note that Talkeetna is well over 100 miles away from Denali. The mountain has staggering size for such a distance way.

There is an interesting political and historical dispute over the mountain’s name. Denali is the traditional Athabascan name, translated as “the great one” or more accurately “the high one”. Athabascans and Native Alaskans would not name a geographic area after a person. It is not in keeping with Native Alaskan tradition.

The name Mt. McKinley was foisted on Alaska. In 1896, a prospector, William Dickey, wanted to make a political statement in favor of the gold standard by naming the mountain after Presidential nominee, William McKinley of Ohio. McKinley, as nominee and later as President, never visited Alaska and he had little to do with the state before he was assassinated in 1901.

In 1975, the Alaska Board of Geographic Names changed the name of the mountain to Denali. Then Alaska Governor Jay Hammond, with support from the Alaska Legislature, appealed to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names for an official name change so the mountain could be Denali.

The Ohio Congressional delegation fought back by introducing legislation to attach the name McKinley permanently to the mountain. One Ohio member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Ralph Regula from Canton, fought the name change for many years. When Rep. Regula testified before the U.S. Board of Geographic Names, he stated:

“This action would be an insult to the memory of President McKinley and to the people of my district and the nation who are so proud of his heritage.”

Considering how undistinguished a president McKinley was (another captive of robber barons) and also considering the fact that he had nothing to do with Alaska, the McKinley name is like a bad joke. Without getting too P.C., calling Denali Mt. McKinley has been an arrogant and blatant act of cultural imperialism. The insult is to the Native Alaskans whose long-term historical presence has been ignored and denied.

The Denali/McKinley name fight has remained a stalemate since 1975 because the U.S. Board of Names has a policy of not considering names changes while legislation is pending. The Ohio Congressional delegation has continued the efforts of Rep. Regula and has put in a bill every session to prevent the Denali name change.

Alaska did gain one victory though. In 1980, the National Park Service changed the park name from Mt. McKinley National Park to Denali National Park although the mountain has remained Mt. McKinley. Regula could not stop the park name change.

Heading into town, Talkeetna (population 772) is tiny with one main drag. It is a big tourist destination with quite a few Alaskan tschotske stores. You can find all trinkets, moose and bear, not to mention aurora borealis. Talkeetna is famous for having been the reputed inspiration for the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska in the TV show Northern Exposure.

I did go for a wonderful lunch at Mountain High Pizza Pie where pizzas, strombolis and calzones are made from scratch. I also stopped in a used book store, Tales Told Twice Books. I bought an early S.J. Rozan novel, Concourse, and an early William Kent Krueger, Iron Lake. (I have a weakness for mysteries) The lady behind the counter asked if I wanted the senior discount. Surprised, I told her I was 60. She said I qualified. Somewhat uneasily, I took the discount.

For anyone who gets near Denali, you might seriously consider renting a small plane. Air taxi service will fly you around Denali and will land you on a glacier. I expect it would be memorable.

One last thing I did want to say: Alaska weather has proven very different from the stereotypes I held before I arrived. Since February, the weather has been consistently nice. New Englanders: don’t go to Florida! Come to Alaska in March or April. Good time to get away from both those late pesky snow storms and mud season. And you can return in time for black fly season.

It is with sadness that I read about the recent death of Joe Bageant on March 26. His is a voice I will miss. His death did not elicit the public attention it deserved. As a culture we pay far more attention to shallow no-talent celebrities than serious writers.

For anybody who has never heard of Bageant, he was a writer, the author of a book that sold pretty well a few years back, Deer Hunting With Jesus. Besides simply writing well, Bageant had a uniquely rural American perspective. Based in Winchester Virginia, he lived in red state heartland, away from any blue metropolis. The only other writer I can think of who was remotely like Bageant was Edward Abbey although they certainly had differences. Both were rebels and both wrote from the boondocks.

As a southern rural white working class writer who zeroed in on the issue of class, Bageant wrote truthfully and empathetically about poor white people. Here is some vintage Bageant:

“To be poor and white is a paradox in America. Whites, especially white males, are supposed to have an advantage they exploit mercilessly. Yet most of the poor people in the United States are white (51%) outnumbering blacks two to one and all other minority poverty groups combined. America is permeated with cultural myths about white skin’s association with power, education, and opportunity. Capitalist society teaches that we all get what we deserve, so if a white man does not succeed, it can only be due to laziness. But just like black and Latino ghetto dwellers, poor laboring whites live within a dead end social construction that all but guarantees failure. If your high school dropout daddy busted his ass for small bucks and never read a book in his life and your mama was a textile mill worker, chances are you are not going to be recruited by Yale Skull and Bones and grow up to be President of the United States, regardless of our national mythology to that effect. You are going to be pulling an eight-buck-an-hour shift work someplace and praying for enough overtime to make the heating bill. A worker.”

Bageant does a good job of showing the devastation meted out to the rural poor. Whether black or white, both have been hammered in this economy.

“Rural America is now a cold heartless place that is very difficult to escape, where the rules of hard work and honesty no longer apply. The only people making any dough in rural and small town America these days are bankers, lawyers, doctors and a few with government jobs. Thanks to the new global economy, it is hard and desperate terrain for working people. Mean too.”

Bageant catalogues the indignities and insults showered on working people. I think it is fair to say he reserves some of his harshest criticism for liberals and the left. Bageant criticizes Democrats and the left for failing to support workers. Now Democrats talk about supporting the middle class, contributing to the national mythology that everyone in America is middle class. Mention of poor or working people has been excised from the vocabulary.

Once upon a time, Democrats stood with workers. Now, many middle class progressives look down their nose and have a contemptuous view of white workers as trailer trash. Bageant totally has their number. He calls out the elitism and class snobbery.

“Liberal America loves the Dalai Lama but is revolted by life here in the land of the pot gut and the plumber’s butt.”

Also:

“The liberal elite is not entirely a Republican myth. This generation of white liberals is not involved in class issues and have become more about trendiness.”

Or how about:

“Ain’t no wonder libs got no street cred. Ain’t no wonder a dope-addicted clown like Limbaugh can call libs elitists and make it stick. From where we stand, knee deep in doctors bills and hoping the local styrofoam peanut factory doesn’t cut the second shift, you ARE elite.”

I do think Bageant was exactly right. Call it lack of empathy, compassion or identification. Liberals have not wanted to be around working people and behind it is class prejudice. Of course, he had no illusions about Republicans and their slavish devotion to the rich. Bageant saw through that agenda.

Bageant wanted liberals and the left to leave their enclaves and reach out to his people. He points out that rural southerners in his region had never met a liberal! The far right is far more interwoven in the community. Bageant suggests focus on fundamental issues like jobs that pay a living wage, education and national health care for all. He especially discusses education. So many people from his region drop out, get an inferior quality education and do not develop critical thinking skills. Money is a part of the equation: education now comes with crushing debt. Bageant has no illusions but he wants progressives to see rural red state areas as places to win over – not write off.

I expect Bageant would have been heartened by recent events in Wisconsin and the development of a new labor movement. He knew his people have been on the losing end of a class struggle. Bageant favored working people getting organized. For anyone who would like to find out more, Bageant’s website is a great place to start : http://www.joebageant.com  His essays are all posted there.  Also, read Deer Hunting with Jesus. It is a hoot, downright entertaining, funny, and a good read. I will also mention that Bageant has a new book coming out called Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir. I haven’t read it yet but I expect it would be well worth reading.

Fairbanks is a genuine end-of-the-road, wild west town. With Denali in the background, Fairbanks is a launch pad for the truly intrepid who want to head further into interior Alaska. We are not talking suburbs. When you get outside Fairbanks, it is the bush.

I spent the last week in Fairbanks and I did want to tout it as a cool place to visit, especially during the World Ice Art Championships , held annually in March.

The ice art competition is something to put on your bucket list. Ice sculptors from over 38 countries have created large and intricate works of art made out of huge blocks of ice. Using chain saws and other hand and power tools, teams are given up to 10 blocks of ice. Each ice block measures approximately 4 ft. x 6 ft. x 3.3 ft.

Teams in the Multi-Block Classic sculpt a minimum of 46,000 pounds of ice. They do have heavy equipment, including specialized forklifts, to harvest, cut and lift the blocks.

The sculptures can be huge, over 25 feet tall. I liked Dream Big Dragon Slayer which featured a detailed ice dragon that must have been 20 feet tall. The Multi-Block Classic starts at 9am on a Sunday and the work must be done on the sculpture by 9pm on Friday. Teams can have two to four members.

In addition to the Multi-Block competition, there is also a Single Block Classic. In this competition, one or two member teams craft single blocks of ice measuring 5 ft. x 8 ft. x 3 ft. Each block weighs 7,800 pounds. This competition begins at 9am on a Tuesday and work must be finished by 9pm on a Thursday.

It all takes place in a large roomy outdoor Ice Park. As part of this event, there is a Kids Park which has to be one of the greatest playgrounds, ever. The Kids Park is entirely composed of ice structures including very long sides built on a hillside, a lifesize maze to walk through, long tunnels to crawl through, an igloo, and other kid-friendly sculptures. I went on a late Wednesday afternoon and there were many lit-up kids running around.

The event, in its 22nd year, is a celebration of spring in interior Alaska. Lights are creatively placed in and around the exhibits to add an extra nocturnal dimension. The event is organized by Ice Alaska, a volunteer organization. The goals of Ice Alaska are worthy:

1) To promote artistic and educational endeavors using ice.
2) To enhance and promote international friendships through cultural and artistic exchange.
3) To preserve and display all cultures through elegant ice exhibitions.
4) To promote Alaska and to encourage winter.

The website of Ice Alaska, http://www.icealaska.org , has photos and video of the exhibits and more information about the artists and related events. The event is something to see.

Before I went to Alaska, an Administrative Law Judge in New Hampshire had told me about her experience flying out of Fairbanks in the winter. She recalled it was 50 below as she sat in a plane. Before take-off, she watched the plane’s wings being de-iced. Earlier, the engine had refused to start due to the cold. She asked herself: do I want to stay on this plane? She did stay and lived to tell about it.

Since I have been in Alaska, I have watched weather forecasts on TV. (They go on longer than in other places because the state is so big and there are multiple weather patterns going simultaneously) For a good part of the winter, the low temperatures in Fairbanks routinely hit 40 below. When I was at the Federal Court there, I joked with a security guard about the weather being nice. He said this winter Fairbanks had a run of solid 45 below for two weeks straight.

It was a balmy 17 below when I arrived but it warmed up and got sunny up into the 20s everyday.

One thing I learned: do not forget to plug in your car at night. I had a rental car and there were hitching posts around town. I found driving in Fairbanks a bit of an unnerving experience. There is probably an inch of ice covering many sections of road. Stopping and turning on ice is an acquired skill. Having lived in New Hampshire, I am accustomed to bad road conditions. It is different in Fairbanks though. Watching the glare ice on the road can throw you and cause second thoughts about speeding. I imagine experience with sliding helps.

I happened to be in town during the Tanana Chiefs Conference. The Conference is a non-profit organization with a membership of Native Governments from 42 interior Alaska communities and participants were staying at the same hotel as me.  I don’t know what happened at the Conference but I will say that the Native Alaskans knew how to party, hard and loud. It sounded like a good time.

When I told one New Hampshire friend I was going to Fairbanks, he jokingly said, ” Scarebanks”.  Fairbanks does seem to have more than its share of crackpots. Last week the FBI arrested a group of Alaska militia members from the Fairbanks area who, according to court documents, were planning on killing state troopers, a federal judge, one of the judge’s family members and an IRS employee.

I admit to being at a total loss to explain the warped ideology behind that world view. Whip together paranoia, conspiracy theories, hatred of the federal government, blood thirstiness, love of weapons, racism, anti-semitism and voila. Voltaire once said, ” Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

The group’s leader, 27 year old Schaeffer Cox, had claimed that he had 3500 members under his command. Cox claimed to be a Sovereign Citizen, not subject to the laws of Alaska or the United States.(Good luck, Mr. Cox)  Cox was so far out in La-La Land that before his arrest he had bragged Alaska authorities were “outmanned and outgunned”.

Of course, no place has a monopoly on crackpots. I would not let it keep you away from Fairbanks. On the flight back to Anchorage, I lucked out and got a completely clear view of Denali. Flying at 23,000 feet, off to the right, it was not too far below. It was majestic, almost unworldly. Not a bad way to finish the work week.

In its March 7/14 issue, the Nation Magazine featured a piece by Stephane Hessel, a former French Resistance fighter against the Nazis. Hessel, who is 93, is a publishing sensation in France. His book, Indignez-vous!, has topped bestseller lists in France. When initially published in France in October 2010, it had a first run of 6000 copies. By the end of 2010, 600.000 copies had been sold.

During World War II, Hessel, who had been living in London, parachuted into occupied France in advance of the Allied invasion in 1944 to organize Resistance networks. He was captured by the Nazis, tortured and sent to Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps. He narrowly escaped death by switching identities with another prisoner who was dying of typhus. After a failed escape attempt at Dora and barely escaping hanging, he did escape the Nazis when he was being transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

After the war, Hessel became a diplomat. He played an important role, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2004, he won the Council of Europe’s North-South Prize. More recently, in 2006, he achieved the rank of Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor and in 2008 he won the UNESCO/Bilbao Prize for the Promotion of a Culture of Human Rights. On February 21,2008, Hessel publicly denounced the French government for failure to comply with Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and called on the government of the French Republic to make funds available to provide housing for the homeless. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care, and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

I also wanted to mention Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which appears to be a favorite of Hessel’s:

“Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social, and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.”

Hessel’s book is now available in the United States and I highly recommend it. The book is a call to action both to protect human rights and to address the widening gap between rich and poor. In this blog entry, I will quote generously from it. I would note that Indignez-vous! is particularly addressed to young people.

Hessel believes that the values and principles which animated the French Resistance over 60 years ago are needed more than ever now. I must admit I did not appreciate the values of that movement. I mostly assumed it was a military effort. Hessel makes clear that the program and values of the French Resistance were the basis for Free France after the war.

Among other things, the Resistance proposed “a rational organization of the economy to guarantee that individual interests be subordinated to the public interest, one free of a dictatorship of established professionals in the image of the fascist state.” The French Resistance supported a strong social safety net. They favored “a comprehensive social security plan, to guarantee all citizens a means of livelihood in every case where they are unable to get it by working” and “retirement that allows older workers to end their lives with dignity”.

The Resistance favored “establishing a true economic and social democracy, which entails removing large scale economic and financial feudalism from the management of the economy”. It also favored a fair division of wealth created by the world of labor over the power of money. The Resistance strongly advocated a free press.

Hessel is quite upset with current deficit-cutting efforts and I suspect he would be equally critical of these efforts in France and the United States. He points out that at the time of Liberation at the end of World War II, Europe lay in ruins. How, he asks, can the money needed to continue and extend social programs be lacking now, when wealth has grown so enormously? As he says,

“It can only be because the power of money, which the Resistance fought against so hard, has never been as great and selfish and shameless as it is now, with its servants in the very highest circles of government.”

Hessel says that the motivation which underlay the French Resistance was outrage at fascism and the Nazis. He speaks up for intelligent outrage.

“The worst possible outlook is indifference that says, “I can’t do anything about it; I’ll just get by.” Behaving like that deprives you of one of the essentials of being human: the capacity and the freedom to feel outraged. That freedom is indispensable, as is the political involvement which goes with it.”

In the book, Hessel says that his life has provided a steady succession of reasons for outrage. He criticizes the European treatment of immigrants and illegal aliens. He particularly criticizes Israel’s actions in Gaza. He says it is imperative to read Justice Richard Goldstone’s report of September 2009 on Gaza. Justice Goldstone, a Jewish South African judge, led a fact-finding mission for the United Nations.

Hessel argues that the future belongs to non-violence. “The message of a Nelson Mandela, a Martin Luther King Jr. is just as relevant in a world that has moved beyond victorious totalitarianism and the cold war confrontation of ideologies.”

As we seek honorable traditions to emulate, what more noble tradition than the example of the French Resistance. On March 8, 2004, on the 60th anniversary of the Program of the National Council of the Resistance, a number of veterans of the French Resistance from 1940 to 1945 addressed an Appeal to the young generation.

“Nazism was defeated, thanks to the sacrifices of our brothers and sisters of the Resistance and of the United Nations against fascist barbarity. But the menace has not completely disappeared, and our outrage at injustice remains intact to this day.”

I will give the last words to Hessel:

“…we continue to call for a true peaceful uprising  against the means of mass communication that offers nothing but mass consumption as a prospect for our youth, contempt for the least powerful in society and for culture, general amnesia and the outrageous competition of all against all.
       To you who will create the twenty-first century, we say from the bottom of our hearts,
       TO CREATE IS TO RESIST
       TO RESIST IS TO CREATE”

From the outset, I will be clear about this: I love Walter Mosley!  I have read most of his books and I always look forward to anything new he puts out. Mosley is unique: for feeling, character and dialogue, there is no more fun read out there. But it is not just fun. Mosley is serious.

Heading back to Anchorage from Portland, I finished Mosley’s newest book, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. I have never read anything quite like it. Mosley gets into the jumbled mind of his protagonist, a 91 year old Black man named Ptolemy Usher Grey. While Grey is suffering from dementia, he has not lost it altogether. He brings to bear a long experience of life and love lessons and a passion for doing what is right.

It is hard to say what is most impressive about Ptolemy Grey. The unabashed feeling Mosley unleashes which can make you cry or the fierce determination for justice which still burns hot in the heart of a 91 year old man. I loved that Mosley made a 91 year old demented Black man his hero.

Central to the plot is the relationship of Grey to a young woman, Robyn, who helps him when he is seriously down and out. Living alone in a filthy L.A. ghetto apartment, preyed on by predator neighbors anxious to steal his money, Grey, with help from Robyn, reemerges into the light. Her help sets into motion surprising developments and it gives Grey a chance to demonstrate his finer qualities.

There are a number of compelling subplots. Grey has a mentor, Coydog McCann, who taught him valuable life lessons. Coy, long dead, lives in Grey’s imagination. His guidance and example were an inspiration to Grey.

“Life ain’t fair. Life ain’t right. Life ain’t no good or bad. What it is is you, boy. You makin’ up your mind and takin’ your own path. Don’t worry ’bout that cop with the truncheon. Don’t worry ’bout a cracker with his teefs missin’ and a torch in his hand. Ain’t none’a that any of your nevermind. All you got to do is make sure he ain’t got a chance.”

I think the Coy-Grey relationship reflects the importance Mosley places on mentoring. Young people need mentors and at key points throughout the novel Coy comes back into Grey’s mind with critical helpful advice from way back. We are not alone in this thing Mosley seems to say. The young people who are clueless in the novel neither have a mentor nor realize what is lacking in their life. Maybe it is being a guy but Mosley is very focused on fathers loving and guiding their sons. That is also true in the Leonid McGill series.

I also read the story as a meditation on love. The mutually giving relationship of Robyn and Grey was a love paradigm. Robyn cared for Grey when he was a mess. He lived in disgusting filth and he was demented almost to the point of incoherence. Robyn befriended him, cleaned his apartment from top to bottom, protected him from vicious assault by muggers, cooked for him, and sought out needed medical care for him. She was not in it for the money. She saved him and he recognized it and reciprocated. To quote them:

“Are you tired ‘a me bein’ here, Uncle?”
“No baby. You put a fire in my mind and love at my doorstep.”

There is typically a fair amount of sex in Mosley’s books. Not so much in this one but still there is an upfront love of sensuality and sexuality. Mosley’s characters are not angels. There is also considerable humor.

“Women deadly serious when it comes to kissin’, Coy used to say. They laugh all the way there, but when it come down to kissin’ they like a cat when she see sumpin’ shakin in the tall grass.”

The racial dimension of Mosley is on full display in Ptolemy Grey. He creates a microcosm ghetto world with a range of believable characters from young to old. Mosley sees the oppression but he generally avoids two dimensional portrayals. Hard not to think he is down with the people although he sugarcoats no one.

I did want to mention his discussion of aging. Mosley empathetically sees the old person shunted aside by society and essentially discarded and ignored. He recognizes the melancholy and bittersweetness of old age. Here is Coy
talking to a young Grey, then L’il Pea:

” The older you get the more you live in the past,” Coy intoned like a minister introducing his sermon. “Old man like me don’t have no first blue sky or thunderstorm or kiss. Old man like me don’t laugh at the taste of a strawberry or smell his own stink and smile. You right there in the beginnin’ when everything was new and true. My world is made outta ash and memories, broken bones and pain.”

Still, the story takes a positive spin and it is not all doom and gloom. Mosley does not see Grey as a victim. In the end, Grey acts to protect his chosen family and he deals out rough justice.

Hard to choose among Mosley books but I liked A Little Yellow Dog in the Easy Rawlins series. Both the recent Leonid McGill books, Known to Evil and The Long Fall are good too. I will also put in a mention for Fortunate Son which I enjoyed a lot. There is a directness and deceptive simplicity in Mosley that evokes Langston Hughes. Mosley opens up and humanizes a whole hidden world – not a bad accomplishment for any writer.

These days many new political books are poorly written, one-sided, and devoid of human interest. The major thrust is scoring points on the opposition. Fairmindedness, balance, and nuance are typically out.

An exception to the above generalization is Tony Judt’s book “Ill Fares the Land”. Published in 2010, it is a short and elegant defense of social democracy. The book is somewhat heretical as it takes on all comers, criticizing the New Left as well as conservatives and libertarians. It is unlikely to make any side too happy.

The title comes from Oliver Goldsmith’s book “The Deserted Village” written in 1770.

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”

Central to the book is Judt’s critique of inequality, particularly the rampant inequality which has worsened in the U.S. and U.K. over the last 30 years. Judt attacks the dominant philosophical underpinning of our era that the point of life is to get rich. He is not impressed with the pursuit of wealth as a goal or ambition. He notes that up until the late 1980’s it was uncommon to meet any independent-minded students who even wanted to attend business school. As an academic, he was in a good position to make that assessment.

Judt encourages questions about public policy like: is it good? is it fair? is it just? will it help to bring about a better world? He believes, and I agree, that our moral sentiments have been corrupted.

Judt points out that in 2005, 21.2% of the U.S. national income accrued to the top 1% of earners. The CEO of Wal-Mart earns 900 times the wages of his average employee. The wealth of the Wal-Mart founder’s family was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40% of the U.S. population: 120 million people.

Judt argues that “…economic disadvantage for the overwhelming majority translates into ill health, missed educational opportunities and – increasingly – the familiar symptoms of depression: alcoholism, obesity, gambling and minor criminality. The unemployed and the underemployed lose such skills as they have acquired and become chronically superfluous to the economy. Anxiety and stress, not to mention illness and early death, frequently follow.”

It is refreshing to read a book that recognizes that unregulated capitalism is its own worst enemy. Yet, it is amazing how many people fail to see what is so obviously true, even after the last three years with all the subprime lending and widespread foreclosures. Apparently nothing, absolutely nothing, can shake the true believer’s faith in unfettered markets.

Judt has the traditional social democratic belief in collective action for the collective good. He believes in both the relevance of the public sector and in progressive taxation for public services. He makes no apologies. While the Right looks at taxes as a curse and as uncompensated income loss, he looks at taxes’ contribution to the quality of life and to the provision of collective societal goods.

Judt brings historical perspective to the question of the role of the state. He believes liberals, social democrats, and the Left have been too modest about positive accomplishments during the 20th century. Not even considering the great accomplishments of the New Deal like Social Security and unemployment compensation, he mentions the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Headstart, Legal Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

These have all enriched our world. Given the historical record, there is an irrationality about the demonization of Big Government. He does recognize, however, that government can get things wrong and he is sensitive to issues of coercion. His critique of government is subtle though and he is balanced in weighing pros and cons.

I had a hard time relating to his critique of the New Left although I certainly think there is plenty to criticize there. Judt critiques the individualism of the New Left. Rather than social justice, Judt saw the Left as about “doing your thing” and “letting it all hang out”. Focus was more on faraway places than shared purpose at home.  Plus he said to be a radical in those years was to be self-regarding, self-promoting, and parochial. I found his critique one-sided and really the perspective of an outsider. I would agree the New Left lost perspective and marginalized itself. Still, he understates some of the positives, particularly the movement against the war in Vietnam which hugely shaped a generation.

Judt is extremely wary of totalistic solutions. He says incremental improvements upon unsatisfactory circumstances are the best we can hope for and probably all we should seek. I would say his viewpoint is informed by both the experience of fascism and Stalinism. To quote him further:

“If we have learned nothing else from the 20th century, we should have at least grasped that the more perfect the answer, the more terrifying its consequences.”

However, it is the Right that draws his strongest fire. He says they have abandoned the association of political conservatism with social moderation. From the war in Iraq through the desire to dismantle public education and health services to financial deregulation, it is the Right which has inherited the ambitious modernist urge to destroy and innovate in the name of a universal project. His critique is that the Right is not conservative, but extremist.

Sadly, Judt died in 2010. He explicitly wrote this book to encourage idealistic young people to engage politics. The book deserves a wide audience. I will close with a quote from Adam Smith that appears in the book and is particularly apropos:

” The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise, or at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition…(is)…the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

My sister Lisa would have turned 58 today. I do find myself dwelling on the unfairness of her exit from this life.  I think about my own good fortune and wonder why. There is no good or fair reason. I find the arbitrariness ridiculous.

I do not think that Lise would have spent much time complaining about the arbitrariness or randomness of fate. She was enormously purposeful even in the face of ultimate absurdity. She derived great satisfaction from caring for family and tending to her clients. I have never met a more dedicated and devoted lawyer to her clients. She really took them in. She was that way with her kids too. She was driven.

She used to keep crazy hours. She hid this reality as she did many other realities. Lisa led a life of dark secrets.

She would often get up at 3am to write briefs or to work on her cases. i think this was partly connected to her inability to stay up late, even moderately late, at night. She had a long history of crashing early. This pattern pre-dates her last years and actually goes back to at least her teen years. She always used to fall asleep on the twin bed in my bedroom at 284 Melrose Road in Merion where we grew up. She would come in ostensibly to do her homework and I would look over and she would be asleep. It might have been 7:30pm.

I used to tease her about it because, for whatever reason, she could not stay awake. She was a morning person and I think she was highly productive early.

The extreme hours pattern was also connected to a choice. There wasn’t enough time and she was aggressively cramming in work in the only time left. Her getting up at 3am happened often especially in her last years. I told her she was nuts but she kept this pattern up long after her recurrence of breast cancer. I don’t think she ever stopped it actually. She always had reasons for burning the candle at both ends. While she did not have her former energy, she struggled to maintain a frenetic pace. The chemo and multiple doctor appointments, her kids, her family, her friends – all these squeezed the time available for her clients. And she had so many.

There was always a client to save and she was going to save them.

Lisa and time – time was the enemy. I think as her illness evolved she stayed up later at night. She took more cat naps. That was her compromise with chemo. I used to worry she was exhausting herself and further compromising her health. When I whined to her about it she would say something like “Shut up Boo-boo.” She was obstinate til the end.

Lisa’s tendency to take on too much, especially after she had no support staff, left her in a chaotic place that most lawyers never would have tolerated. I think it was unfortunate that she was a solo practitioner late in her career. There was no organization around her to say “no” or to set limits.

The disorganization of her legal files did reflect a failure on her part to recognize limits. I suppose it also reflected Lisa’s devaluation of routine, normalcy, and organization. I think she saw her life as being more about substance than form. She knew things had spun out of control but I don’t think she saw any way to fix the problem. She had rationalizations. There was only so much time. Maybe her files were all over the city but her health was deteriorating and she had no help. She did not tell others about how chaotic things had become as her illness advanced.

Her heart was set on saving the clients which she could do better than most anybody. Lives were on the line and she knew the stakes. The truth is that Lisa won many victories that other more conservative lawyers never would have even attempted. And that is not just because the clients would not fork over a large enough retainer. Lisa took longshot cases. A number of her wins were anything but routine. She had some great wins at the Third Circuit that made law. After Lisa died, my mom received a lovely note from the workers at the Immigration Court in Philadelphia, including personally inscribed notes from the judges, expressing their admiration for Lisa and sorrow about her passing.

Before I leave the subject of personal chaos, I did want to mention one other black humor aspect: Lisa and Philadelphia parking tickets. She had a history with parking tickets, mostly getting them. i think she had some good experience going to court and arguing her way out of tickets as well as arguing her fines down.

For whatever reason, the parking tickets never stopped. I don’t know but I suppose parking in the city is hard. Maybe Lise just accepted parking tickets as a fact of her life as a lawyer.  There was something of an oblivious quality. My mom and I used to laugh about it except the ticket costs mounted and it seemed like the parking authority was like a mafia.

Lisa did have a wonderful sense of humor that helped her navigate through crises and her life. She also had a great laugh.

I will tell one story that happened late in her life. Lisa was always driving to far away places to see clients in jail or to represent them in court. She had to go to York. Pa one day for a hearing on one of her cases. Because the hearing was early, she drove west of Philadelphia the night before and stayed in a motel near the court. Lise was very sick at the time. She had had a number of rounds of chemo after her recurrence and she had lost most of her hair. She had a wig. The next morning when she got up, it turned very windy outside. As she left the motel and was heading for her car to go to court, a gust of wind blew her wig off and across the parking lot. The wig landed in a mud puddle. Lise grabbed up the wig, washed it as best she could and on it went. At court, when she was asked about why her hair was so wet, she nonchalantly explained that she had just showered.  She always got a kick about telling the story even though it was a painful subject because she hated that she had lost her hair.

I do still miss talking to Lise very much. She was a big advice giver and she always had a lot to say on my life. It is good to have someone like that in your life.

I  recently reconnected with early childhood friends Jude, Sheila, and Lynne Coren. I know how much Lise would have loved this. She was very big on constantly maintaining and preserving important relationships. Recontacting Jude, Sheila or Lynne would have majorly pushed her buttons and turned her on. I almost feel like an ambassador for Lise in her absence. I know she would have been way ahead of me in initiating and promoting contact. That was Lise.

To remember and honor Lise, I wanted to offer two poems by different poets that , in my opinion, evoke her.  The poems by Sharon Olds and Kenneth Patchen are poems I think she would have liked.

From Seven Floors Up

He is pushing a shopping cart up the ramp
out of the park.  He owns, in the world,
only what he has there – no sink, no water,
no heat. When we had come out of the wilderness,
after the week in the desert, in tents,
and on the river, by canoe, and when I had my own
motel-room, i cried for humble dreading
joy in the shower, I kneeled and put
my arms around the cold, clean
toilet. From up here, his profile looks
like Che Guevara’s, in the last picture,
the stitches like marks on a butcher’s chart.
Suddenly I see that I have thought that it could not
happen to me, homelessness
—-like death, by definition it would not happen.
And he shoulders his earth, his wheeled hovel,
north, the wind at his back—-November,
the trees coming bare in earnest. November,
month of my easy birth.

                                               Sharon Olds

I Care What Happens

Prodigious goals–Flakes boat starmarsh–Great Highone i care
what happens to every human being, O I live locked in that–
the smell of a stone in the sun–Locked in my heart are all the
slender still silences of the grove and there too the black cries and
the pierced beggars in fluttering doorways–Call through the
howling O
someone thinks of greater deeds than lying and murder.
Every mouth sucks at life and is filled in one way or another.

Hounds playing tennis on a pale bridge. The grim asses of trains
bluther down the valley. Nowhere to go, brother.
Even hard things hide.
But life does not break.

Let us shout in our cages! Rattle the damn bars!
Under the invisible is a man’s heart.
I am like you. We are things of the same kind.
We are all standing here among the hideous statues.
I urge you to protest this murderous swindle. Do it.

I walk out into the streets of this city.
They have made liars of all these people. They have made them
cheat and do murder. Their faces are afraid, and ugly. They live
with hatred in their hearts. They love nothing at all.
Everything in this city is ugly. It is a sort of death to walk here.
A filth of lies and hopelessness covers everything. I go into a
lunchroom and order coffee. Every table is taken. i stand in a
corner and drink the coffee. I have a feeling that at any moment
spmebody will blow up and start clawing everyone within reach.
But they just sit around in there and make the usual stale noise.
I get out as fast as I can.

Prodigious dreams–I walk down and sit on a bench by the river.
An old man sits down beside me. A sour vomit smell comes off
his clothes. he picks his nose and hums a popular song. I move
on to another bench. Two girls are sitting there smoking. They
don’t look at me. A shout from over by the drinking fountain and
a man lurches down the path with blood streaming down his chin.
I wait a minute, then set off for home

                                                                                                        You–
The meaning is in the wonder.
Towns and seas and all poor devils everywhere. In no way is
life ever changed.
Through acceptance of the mystery, peace.
And only through peace can come acceptance of the mystery.
We are not open. The glory cannot come in. How soon after our
best things is the taste bitter again.
As of this earth and what I am on this earth—I fiercely wish to
protect the things I love.
They fill my eyes with tears—the things I love.
Suppose they are nothing—they are all I have.

                                                               Kenneth Patchen