Sea change

Old folks who live by the sea talk about the "sea change." Visitors note how the water is at dramatically different levels morning, noon and night. Some may even get out charts and calculate when high or low tides will come. But only those who have spent their lives by the sea and in close communion with it can sense the change from rising to ebbing tide without such charts.

It's like a solstice when the sun stops its daily drift toward the southern horizon, appears to hold steady for three days and then moves incrementally back up the sky. None of the changes seem that dramatic in the moment, but the change in the tilt of the planet or in the tide is actually massive.

The tide comes in--huge volumes of water rise unstoppably--and then in a moment between one identical wave and the next... it stops. You can't see the switch from the beach. You wouldn't be able to tell for another hour, unless you're an old salt. But the sea has changed.

In that moment, the tide stopped coming in and the moon subtly began to pull it from the depths of space, so that it is receding. 

Sea change - massive change that appears incremental and inconsequential, that cannot be perceived in a short period of time, but in the end, is profound.

Scientists warn us that climate change is like that. We don't know exactly when our burning of fossil fuels and release of methane into the atmosphere will trigger the shift of some massive system into an unstoppable slide toward a vastly different world that may well be either unimaginably hot or brutally cold, depending on which shift is triggered. 

October every four years feels a bit like that too as votes trickle in and the tide of popular opinion is measured. But especially this time. While we fear the sea change of the climate, we desperately hope for this other one. So many small actions of resistance have gone into it, building up over the past two years toward desperately needed change.

Image via Pixabay

And in the end what really matters is not Trump but the shift in the hearts and minds of the nation. Even if that did not determine the outcome of the election, a shift toward empathy and science is really what is most needed.

This year I'm also undergoing a personal sea change. A path I set out on thirty years ago is ending or at least dramatically changing. The tide that carried me far from my childhood home is shifting back, drawing me back to the mountains of Eastern Oregon. And yet at the moment nothing much seems to be happening on the outside.

I am caught at that moment of shift, at the lowest ebb of the tide. The force that used to pull me away from my home and family has slackened and I feel a deep tide begin to tug me back. But I'm not moving yet. There is too much momentum to my life—a house, a garden, family, people, work, stuff, animals... It has all been headed in one direction for a long, long time and this place still demands me for another season.

But the shift has come. The decision has been made.

I am going back to Oregon. I will likely make the first part of the move sometime next summer. I have a provisional place to live and a rudimentary plan for how to survive materially. That’s the shift, having a feasible plan.

Why? I’ve decided this just before yet another election in which many of my fellow citizens are vowing that if things go badly they are really leaving the country this time. And I am going back.

I suppose the election could derail that. If violence really does break out in some massive way, I may not be able to come so soon. But the pull has shifted. My life is now pulling me back there, while for at least thirty years I was pulled out into other countries.

The reasons have many different levels. On one level, my kids need the change.

The schools in the Czech Republic, and particularly in our little town here, have proved disastrously inadequate. The curriculum is uninspired and guaranteed to deaden all curiosity and interest in learning. The teachers are indifferent to their craft. Some are more than happy to take advantage of the Covid crisis in order to flagrantly neglect their students. There certainly is little help for kids with the complex special needs my kids acquired with their difficult start in life.

Beyond the schools, the entire society here is hostile to my kids because of their Romani ancestry. I had hoped that our family could compensate for that, and we do to a large degree. Some Romani children might have been resilient enough to hold their heads up and find a positive identity despite the bigotry and negative stereotypes surrounding them in society. But these children have too many other struggles and that resilience has taken a beating. They need a society where they are at least not public enemy number one from birth.

The US is far from perfect on race and ethnicity issues. Many people will likely think I’m naive or worse in this part of the decision. But the fact is that while black and brown people in America encounter terrible prejudice, danger and hostility on a daily basis, people with olive skin and striking dark eyes are not the main focus of that bigotry. Here in the Czech Republic, they are. If my kids’ ancestry was African, I might well be making the opposite choice.

They will no doubt have to struggle in America—being non-white kids with English as a second language after all. But all things together, they’ll stand a better chance.

As for me, I need the change too. I started out well in this country twenty-five years ago. As a young, healthy, up-and-coming journalist able to live on next to nothing, this place took me in and let me flourish. The tight public transportation network was exactly what a young blind professional needed. The booming cosmopolitan atmosphere of the 1990s resonated in my soul.

But I’ve taken a few major hits over the years. The vibrant world of journalism I came here for disappeared after 9/11 due to economic and political circumstances. Prague’s scene changed and became more harsh and polarized. I had health trouble and am no longer the physical powerhouse I once was.

More than anything, my life shifted from the city to a small town and in fifteen years of trying I have failed to be truly accepted by that town. Pulling up my roots in the town of Mnichovice is the easiest part of this shift. I’ll simply have to tell the school my kids are transferring and say goodbye to exactly five pleasant acquaintances. That’s it. Not much to show for fifteen years of attempts to participate in community life and make friends.

Leaving my physical home and garden is the hardest part. When things were tough and my professional, social and community efforts were thwarted at every turn, I channeled my energy into my home and garden. And that effort has born delightful fruit.

Despite a cold, north-facing slope at a northern latitude, I have managed to sculpt it into a little paradise with greenhouses, herb gardens, a sauna, animals I love and a home specifically designed for the needs of a visually impaired person. I will likely never have that level of physical beauty and comfort in a home again.

It’s also likely the beginning of the end of my marriage. My husband agrees that the children desperately need this move and that I have been unfairly isolated and ostracized by the community here because of my vision impairment, but he cannot and does not want to leave himself. His professional work isn’t transferable and he has never had any interest in living anywhere else. He doesn’t like the United States that much, and because he isn’t a citizen, it would be a major struggle to get the papers for him to be able to live there.

So the partnership that started with practical necessity, fun late-night discussions and mutual respect may well end with a similar lack of fireworks. Or maybe it will endure in some transformed, long-distance state, but it is no longer the strong bond that held me here for so many years.

This fall the few last cords binding me firmly to this place snapped and when they gave way the weaker bonds went with very little resistance. Now I feel that giddy weightlessness like. you do at the end of the arc of a swing with a very long chain.

Wheeee!!! For a moment, you feel utterly free.

But I know that this is only a momentary illusion, a dizzy moment. There is another place waiting to pull me back and its pull has been strong for years already. Now without the momentum of something else to pull me away and with the needs of my children clearly pulling that direction, I will be coming home at last.

I hope that my sea change will coincide with a long awaited sea change for the whole world and for the United States specifically. I hope that we’ll look back on 2020 as the year people finally stopped ignoring climate change and a critical mass of people became willing to change business as usual in order to avoid catastrophe for future generations.

I hope that 2020 will not only mark the removal of Trump from office but the beginning of a long swing in the opposite direction, toward science-based policy, earth-centered economics, inclusive society and human solidarity. It’s all up to a shift in the hearts and thoughtful consideration of many people.

Getting the ballot to the box

What does voter suppression look like?

As most of my readers know, I've never been a good party-line holder. Not of any party and least of all the Democrats. I told them flat out after the debacle of the 2016 primary that I was pulling my primary registration and giving it to whoever showed a backbone.

The staffer on the phone, sighed and said, "Yeah, I get it." And in his tone of voice I heard that he probably really did. I'm not a good party member, but I don't judge people for making their own call. 

Volunteers for the Democrats kept calling me anyway and around about early August this year I was glad they did. "Send in a form to request your ballot," one of them told me.

"But I'm registered and we've had mail-in ballots forever in Oregon. They just send it to me automatically," I protested.

"Not this year. There's trouble with ballots. Fill out the form." 

So, I did. I may not be a good soldier on the party line, but we are on the same battle field and at the moment headed in the same direction. I appreciated the heads-up.

And it came none to soon. My ballot did not show up in September as it used to. By the first week in October, I had to wonder. So, I called the county clerk. Sure enough, they had sent my ballot three weeks earlier in response to the request form, but it never arrived.

Not only that but the county worker told me the rules have changed. No one cares about your postmark anymore. The ballot has to be in the box at the county by November 3 or it's all over. And my ballot already had less time to make the return trip than it had taken to get to my remote location.

Creative Commons image from the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association photostream

Another volunteer from the Democrats called again. "Did you do it?"

"Yup. But I've got a problem," I told them.

This year the usual machinations around voting have become cut-throat, they tell me. Everything before was like child's play. Now everyone's dead serious and the lengths some will go to in order to keep people from voting are shocking. 

In just my situation, there was the unannounced rule that you have to request a ballot months in advance. Then there is the intentional crippling of the postal service, resulting in major delays. And finally, if you somehow manage to get your ballot, you have to get it back on a timeline you can't control or it's all for nothing.

I'm not even one of the people who has to take unpaid leave and stand in line for hours in the midst of a pandemic. I'm not even in danger of having my ID questioned or my registration pulled because my name shares three letters with that of a convicted felon. 

My husband, shakes his head, observing from the comfortable distance of a European. "Those lines..." he says. "You see lines like that in countries like Belarus, when they actually let people vote. You never see people waiting in line to vote in normal countries. It's just the countries with questionable democracies and... the States." He paused long before finishing. 

I had been telling him for a long time that there is trouble in American democracy, but I think this was actually something that shook him a little. 

This year of all years, there is more voter suppression in the US than anyone has seen before. Pundits on TV say that this is because Trump and his people know he can't possibly win if everyone votes. 

Voting is suddenly harder than ever and it has never mattered more than it does now.

One rainy afternoon, I lie on the couch with my ten-year-old son listening to a radio program. They play a clip of Trump telling white supremacists and neo-Nazis to "stand back and stand by" in that ominous way he did. 

My son, who is a dark-eyed, olive-skinned naturalized American, shudders and raises up on an elbow, fixing me with his round pools of serious soul. "Mama, I don't think we should go to America. It's too dangerous." 

We are, in fact, more than considering moving back to the mountain valley of my birth--for better special education services for the kids and for the cohesion of local community. I don't blame my son for being nervous. He may not even realize that he could specifically be a target of those racists, but he knows well enough that our little family always stands out with unmatching skin tones, a blind mother and a lot of free thinking. 

Like most, I can't guarantee the safety of my children. I can't personally hold a line and be sure they will be protected. But this vote does matter. My ballot may not matter any more than it has before--one card in a sea of paper--but if I'm feeling the pinch, so are a lot of others.

The Republicans have attempted to suppress the vote among people of color for generations. The reason is clear enough. While a few people in such areas might vote for them, the statistics are clear. Most people in diverse and disadvantaged areas vote for the "anyone but the Republican" candidate. Not to put to fine a point on it but it really isn't accurate to say they habitually "vote Democratic." 

The same holds true for civilian voters abroad. I wonder if overseas military bases are awash in voting options. They might be. It likely depends on the stats, though I know quite a few soldiers who have seen a thing or two of the world and are ready for change. But it doesn't take a sociologist to figure out that overseas civilian voters are going to vote for "anyone but..." 

That's likely why the hammer has come down and my ballot is AWOL. 

And more importantly, that means a lot of other ballots are AWOL, as the volunteer on the phone confirmed. There are also statistics showing that Democrats vote by mail far more often than Republicans, hence the dismantling of the postal service and attacks on mail-in ballots in general.

Oregon does supposedly have the option of email voting, which I've never tried, so I go back to the county clerk's office and ask if I can do it that way. Finally, after two months of persistence, I get a ballot. It's via email and it doesn't look much like the ballots I'm used to but it's the best shot I have. 

I spare a moment of thanks for the staff of our county clerk's office, who logged multiple emails and phone calls over one ballot, and the Democratic party volunteers, who are working like their lives depend on it. 

I'm sick with an intestinal parasite and my son is going back on Covid lockdown as his school is closing tomorrow. I can barely get out of bed but I"m going to get through the paperwork for the email ballot. This is the time we have to fight for our votes. 

And I'm also adding my voice to the rising warning about voter suppression. Get your votes in early. Make sure you're still registered the way you thought you were. Make sure you've got your ballot. Take no chances. There are no done deals. If enough people can be prevented from voting, anything can happen. 

Blessings from my hearth to yours. May you be warm, safe and well. 

Hair, identity, ageism and a pinch of joy

My mother tells me that she cut my long, wispy, ultra-tangly, white-blonde hair when I was five years old. Being a highly-opinionated and strong-willed child, I apparently screamed at her in a rage. She never did that again.

Eventually, I let her trim the split ends off of my wild mop of hair as a teenager, but I was highly sensitive to how much it was cut. I’m not sure where exactly I got this relationship to my hair.

I think part of it came from my family’s counterculture identity, which I clung to desperately. I was viciously rejected by kids in the small-town school I attended, because of my strange, wiggly, near-sighted eyes and my inability to adopt the subservient, non-centered role that might have won me pity rather than aggression. One of my reactions to that was to brandish my family’s counterculture identity like a shield, possibly as a way to beg the question: Was I really rejected because of something individual to me or was it a consequence of the clash of tribes?

This is me at a hippie-gathering c. 1979

And hair was part of that clash. The men in our family didn’t cut their hair when I was little as a statement of rebellion. My father and older brother both had long, lustrous locks, both thicker and much more easily brushed than mine. My father’s was a a rich, sun-streaked oak brown. My brother’s was golden as a cherub’s. My much thinner, flimsier and frizzier hair was bleached so nearly white that doctors speculated that my vision problems might be related to albinism, though I wasn’t a real albino.

The issue of girls’ hair was not nearly as culturally sensitive. Some girls in our circle did have short hair, often shorter than the boys. But somehow it stuck in my mind that long hair was part of family and clan unity, something I desperately needed.

That is why I had very long, very light hair as a young adult, a feature that stood out wherever I went, and particularly when I traveled in places where black hair was in the majority. It was, in fact, an ice breaker that gained me friendly hospitality in far flung places on more than one occasion.

One of my favorite memories is when I sat on the edge of a massive cliff in front of a Nepali village in the morning to brush my hair and thus attracted a gaggle of young women, who gathered around me with their own brushes and combed one another’s hair and my hair while the sun came up over the Himalayas in a dazzle of warm pastels.

By then, I knew that I had been right as a child. My long hair was an asset that I should never cut. It was finicky and difficult though. Brushing it was often a chore and washing it with the standard, commercial shampoos and conditioners I could afford was a recipe for pain, frustration and a lot of breakage.

I certainly never dyed it. Not only was its color firmly engrained in my identity as well, I was also afraid of what the harsh chemicals in hair dye would do to my already fragile and precarious hair.

Over the years, my white-blonde hair turned a bit darker, with dirty-looking streaks underneath. Sunlight still bleached the upper layer and no matter what hairstyle I tried, it always frizzed out around my face, making me look a bit like a mad scientist and acquiring terrible tangles. It looked best when left down in long, flowing locks, but given how fine and fly-away it was, the slightest breeze or any movement on my part resulted in a tangle that would take an hour or more to brush and leave me with fist-fulls of broken hair that progressively thinned what I had.

Eventually, I discovered through trial and error that the only brush that will handle my hair both gently and thoroughly is an afro pick. White people usually don’t know what exactly these are supposed to be for, so they just assume that’s what I like. Black people tend to give me confused (or sometimes amused) looks. My hair is about as different from African hair as it is possible to get, but that’s simply the only thing that works well.

Finally, in my late thirties my hair started going gray. As with the dark streaks it didn’t go gray in any decent way, just in unsightly patches. One year, I thought my hair was all going to fall out because even with the picks and expensive hair products, I ended up with ever larger fistfuls of fallen and broken hair when I brushed.

And that was around the time when I noticed that strangers started treating me differently. I’ve always gotten some strange looks from people on the street, especially if I don’t carry a white cane as explanation for my strange-looking eyes and my occasional odd way of walking or peering at objects. But this change was different.

When I was younger, everyone from officials to shop-keepers usually defaulted to kindness toward me, often condescendingly so, if they realized I was mostly blind. Still, in a wide variety of cultures, I had generally positive experiences with people I had never met before once I was out of the bullying ring of school. The issue of being actual friends with a blind person was always a different matter, but interactions were pleasant enough when they remained on an anonymous surface level.

Here’s my hair while I’m teaching ESL classes in a remote mountain cabin in the Czech Republic in 2016

That started to change in my late thirties. People in positions of authority are less likely to have mercy on me. Random strangers are less likely to stop and answer kindly if I ask for directions. Shop assistants are less likely to willingly help me. It feels as if I somehow lost a bit of my white privilege. That has made me wonder if I used to pass as abled a lot more than I thought. Maybe it is perceived abled privilege I lost. But I also see another possibility.

I think it’s ageism. The changes correlated exactly with the graying of my hair and the roughening of my face. And it tends to be a lot worse when I am not wearing a hat. So, there’s that.

Last year, when I was part of climate change protests and we had several of our own photographers taking thousands of pictures, I noted that although the core group was only about thirty people of which I was one of the most active, there was not one picture that showed my face in our database after several months. Every other person in the group was pictured many times.

Most of the people in the group were young. This is climate activism after all. But the few older men were seen in pictures. And two other women over forty were also in pictures, though not very often. Their hair was dyed and you couldn’t readily see their age.

But I was invisible. I was too busy to notice for many months until I was browsing the photo archives for an article, and the complete lack was striking enough to stand out.

That’s what I’ve been told happens to older women. After a certain age, you disappear.

I have never been very vain or hung up on appearances in general. My mother also says that when I was fourteen I told her I couldn’t believe people actually cared that much about visual first impressions. Since I couldn’t see such things and objective measures show first impressions to be misleading, I couldn’t imagine how it could be that important.

I did dress up for job interviews and wear professional clothing to work, but I saw this as more of a uniform than a ploy to make good first impressions. It was my positive attitude, skills and intellect I counted on to get me through doors. And for awhile, that worked.

I was fortunate enough to have a face that more fashion-conscious women told me didn’t desperately need makeup. I was young and healthy. and I did have that striking hair. So, until I started to age, doors were generally open to me.

That was another thing that closed down hard and fast in my mid-thirties. I can get tutoring jobs. I guess teachers are allowed to look old. I can get the occasional online writing gig where the image of my face is never considered. But I can’t get any other kind of job no matter how well my qualifications fit.

And networking to get ahead… Not a chance. That’s all about first impressions. I know that now.

Picking black berries in autumn color

A few years back I acquired a tutoring student who is a country manager at a major hair-care company. And she often commented on options for my hair and brought me samples of the company’s products. These helped to slow the shedding and breakage of my hair. And she introduced me to the idea of using natural henna and other herbs to dye my hair.

At first, the whole idea of dying my hair was disturbing. The color was almost as much a part of my identity. as the length. But somewhere, deep down, I had always had a desire for red hair, since the days when my idol was the cartoon of the Strawberry Shortcake doll and my primary imaginary friend in looked like her.

Then there was my long love-affair with Anne of Green Gables as a.teen in a household that only got educational television. One way or another, in my generation blonde was sort of considered “desirable” but at the same time blondes were ridiculed. Red-heads seemed to be somehow outside the rules of fashion and usually both strong and independent.

And of course, the main shade henna does is red.

But the hair-care manager insisted that this kind of natural hair dying could only be done at a salon with complicated methods and equipment. That was a step too far. Even if it weren’t an extravagant expense, I’m a DYI kind of girl. So, I still hesitated—until a red-headed friend from the Bohemian highlands told me that she colors the gray spots in her own hair with henna and that it is possible to do alone.

So, finally I found a source of a completely herbal hair dye and tried it. The first shade I used barely gave my hair a gold tint. So, I went for one that promised a much darker red than I initially wanted. The result was perfect, just the shade of strawberry blonde I had always wanted.

Here’s my new look.

I dyed my hair one sunny early autumn day when I was at home alone and waited to see what my husband would say about it. He was actually struck speechless for a moment and then showed uncertainty and concern. Had I done something rash again that would have negative social consequences? My son was equally disconcerted.

Finally, I found a few people online who liked my new color, but the response wasn’t unanimous, except from my ESL class of older women. They were all enthusiastic and their delight looked genuine enough.

But the thing that really let me know it is a good thing is that I can’t help smiling every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I haven’t enjoyed looking at myself at all in years, and I don’t think I ever actually felt good about my appearance. In some ways that’s enough for me.

So, I’ve learned that appearances do matter much more than reason dictates. I’ve found out what happens when people just don’t like the look of someone and what happens when a woman crosses the boundary into looking old.

I don’t like it and I see the dismissal of older women as a key component of our society’s patriarchal disease, but I have also accepted that it is our current reality. And I’ve realized a long-held, somewhat frivolous wish.

Am I buying in to the patriarchy by coloring my hair and hiding my gray? Some may think so. It causes me a twinge, but the joy I feel at having this one little bit of vanity for the first time outweighs it. I would have felt the same joy even if my hair wasn’t gray, but I didn’t know about or have access to a healthy hair dye in those years.

I hope you are likewise able to fulfill a wish every now and then (even one that is important to your heart). Fulfilling a wish beyond that necessary for survival gives joy in this time of Covid-19. Use these changes, whatever they may be in your circumstances to try something you always wanted to.

Keep your convictions strong. Keep openness and care for those who are cast out. After all, we are the ones who become the change..

Mumbled oaths: What to do about kids and the Pledge?

I had heard it was making a resurgence during the Trump years.

For a couple of decades, I enjoyed entertaining people in other countries with my tales of Cold-War-era American schoolroom machinations, when we were required to stand and solemnly pledge allegiance to our flag and then practice hiding under our desks for shelter from Russian missiles.

Creative Commons image by Charlie Marshall

Since Trump took office, I have heard increasing reports that old Pledge statutes have been revived and more and more schools require the recitation of the oath again.

With one of my kids going to school in the US this year, that reality has hit home. My daughter is attending school in Oregon this year, while living with her grandmother, and scarcely a week went by before a note came home from the teacher directing her guardians to explain the importance of the Pledge to her.

My mother’s response was, “Well, it might be an issue, since she is a dual citizen.”

That wasn’t my first inclination, but she does have a point there. If one did believe in the Pledge, wouldn’t it be an issue that a kid clearly couldn’t pledge all loyalty to only one of their two nations? I wonder if school officials in rural Eastern Oregon even know that a person can have more than one nationality. But I frankly doubt they care, since back in my day they always insisted that immigrant children and atheist children swear to the flag and under God, regardless of reason or feeling.

I am sure it was controversial back in the 1980s too… somewhere. But it wasn’t controversial in rural Eastern Oregon where I grew up. There was no public voice of dissent and thus no controversy.

At that time, there was no possibility of open challenge or opting out in school. But there was also no question that my family were dissidents. Some of my earliest memories involve standing on a sheet of black plastic in the sunshine while adult hippies cut out around my shadow to use as a template for chalking onto the streets during nighttime direct-action protests against nuclear weapons.

Some will always claim that anyone critical of their government, must “hate their own country.” But we didn’t hate America. We just didn’t think America was much different from any other part of the globe.

I loved the land I grew up on passionately, but I was not particularly interested in where the borders were. When I was seven, my family spent a few months in Mexico and I quickly bonded with local kids. As a teenager I was concerned about justice for Central American people brutalized by US-backed paramilitaries. Even living in such an isolated, rural place I was aware of and focused on the wider world.

So, it did not seem reasonable to me that I should pledge my allegiance to a flag or the nation for which it stood. My allegiance was already given to truth and justice and human rights wherever they stood. Certainly, my parents instilled some of this in me just by talking politics and hanging out with other people who talked politics in a progressive, international and compassionate spirit. But a lot of the spit and fire for it probably was of my own making.

My older brother also had a significant influence on me and was similarly disposed. When I first entered school, he warned me about the Pledge and eventually he also gave me the means to deal with it, apparently unbeknownst to our parents.

It may be worth pointing out that we had been brought up in a dissident family, where our spirituality, our politics, the extra garden plot out in the woods and even our reading choices, were clearly in opposition to the mainstream and better kept quiet. I don’t recall my parents or any other adult in our circle of friends explicitly telling me to keep our beliefs or politics secret, but I think my brother may have sworn me to silence for my own protection.

So, we did not challenge the Pledge openly either. By the time we entered school, we knew the authorities of society would not take kindly to our views and that we were too small a minority to change things. At least, I’m assuming that’s why we went straight to subterfuge. We weren’t habitually dishonest in most things.

My brother’s method, which he passed on to me, was to recite different words—based on a quote by Matt Groening—that are close enough to the Pledge to go undetected by the casual lip-reading of teachers. The point was not to make a serious alternative pledge that actually meant something. The point was to simply opt out of the one on offer without being detected, even if we happened to be leading the Pledge in front of the class.

For that possibility, it still had to start with the same few words, so we departed a little from Groening’s original and said. “I pledge allegiance to the flakes of the untitled snakes of a merry cow and to the republicrats for which they scam: one nacho, underpants with licorice and jugs of wine for owls.”

It worked fine and saved me from agonizing over being a hypocrite. For many years, I firmly believed my brother had invented it himself, but the wonders of the internet have lead me to its original source.

In any event, when I told my mother this, she was shocked and appalled and forbid me to teach it to my daughter. For one thing, the local school is a charter school and she immediately had visions of my daughter being expelled for unwisely sharing our version, regardless of the 2020 Oregon law that makes it technically legal for kids to opt out of the Pledge. And under the “my roof, my rules” law of our family, my mother gets to call this one.

The truth is that my daughter was not brought up in the atmosphere I knew as a child. We have never hidden much and while we are still outside the norm, inside the US or outside it, I haven’t raised my kids to fear authorities or to keep secrets. I didn’t think I had to, and while I think a parent has got to do whatever it takes to protect their kids in the situation at hand, I don’t think fear and secrecy is the best policy unless safety requires it. If I can choose, I would rather choose openness.

And as such, my daughter is ill prepared for this situation and hasn’t been good at keeping secrets, even about things like someone’s birthday present.

So, what can we do as parents and grandparents if a child doesn’t want to recite the Pledge? Well, there are a few options:

1. One could research local laws, and use them.

2. One could tell a reluctant child to simply mouth the words and not think about it too much, whether they want to or not.

3. Or one could discuss the issues with the child and figure out what part is bothering them and help them secretly change just those few words that bother them most. The child could pledge allegiance to the earth or to truth and justice or something of the like, reciting the edited version without actually informing the school.

The first option above—the option to use laws and reason to demand the child’s right to remain silent during the pledge—is something that has to be chosen based on the specific situation and the openness of the school administration. I might fight that fight if I was there in person and my child had a strong opinion on the matter, but I also might not.

As I said, Oregon law actually makes it legal for a child to remain silent during the Pledge. However, as I discovered as a child with a disability, integrated into an unwilling school by legal force, using that one in a school that is against it can make for a miserable experience.

It would take energy and time that might be better spent elsewhere. And it could result in lengthy homeschooling, which would be exceedingly difficult with my particular child. This decision really depends on the local community atmosphere, how committed the child is and whether or not the child is completely alone in their reticence.

The second option is my mother’s first choice and she was the one who successfully taught me to fly under the radar.

It would also be true to my daughter’s Czech roots. The Czechs—being a tiny nation squashed between superpowers—long ago perfected the art of pretending smiling loyalty to whomever held the castle at the moment.

Just recite and block it out. That was my husband’s first inclination, having grown up with similar anti-democratic tactics under the Communist regime of the East Bloc. His response was: “She’ll just have to bow her head the way we did under the totalitarian Communists. Her father and grandfather and great-grandfather all did it, and so can she.”

“As far as I heard great-grandfather went to jail several times rather than bow his head,” I ventured.

“Yeah, but he too learned in the end.”

I am not really as opposed to that kind of dodging as you might think, given my vehemence about integrity. I dislike it for what it tells kids about oaths, keeping one’s word and integrity, but I can also make up creative ways a kid could interpret those words.

If you are being forced to swear something through rote recitation in a group, I don’t believe it reflects that much on your honor if you don’t mean it. The shame belongs to those who would practice such abuse of an oath, one which permanently cheapens and degrades the concept of one’s word for an entire generation..

The final option is the one I am most likely to recommend to others. If swearing allegiance to a flag and a state and under a god that you don’t believe in bothers either the parent or the child or both, there are options. Certainly, I would prefer to teach children openness, integrity and the sacredness of an oath. But this may well be the best of the bad options those in positions of power have left to us.

If it is the “God’ part that bothers you, which is understandable for some of my Pagan friends, a child could recite “one nation under the gods” or “one nation under the sun.”

Despite my Pagan persuasion that isn’t actually my primary issue, though i don’t like the god bit either. My issue would be with swearing to a flag and to one nation. A child could recite, “I pledge allegiance to the flags of the United Nations, and to the earth for which they stand, one world, indivisible, under the sun with liberty and justice for all.”

Even that clearly isn’t perfect. Not all the states of the United Nations are anything you’d want to pledge loyalty to. But it’s close and it matches the wording enough that while it is easier to detect than my brother’s version, it is less likely to cause offense if exposed and more likely to be accepted by authorities as a reasonable alternative.

A child could insert, “the flags of my countries” if the issue is strictly that the child has allegiance to more than one nation.

For me, this is still very much a stop-gap measure, even if such alterations were officially approved by school officials. My greatest beef with the Pledge is not its wording, not the one nation or the one god or anything of the like. It is the way it handles oaths of loyalty.

i firmly believe that an oath should mean something quite sacred and it should always be a true act of will, i.e. voluntary.

Each autumn, there is a week in which I put images of the Roman goddess Fides, goddess of oaths, up on my altar to give offerings to her and restate my oaths—oaths of marriage and adoption, oaths of loyalty and pledges to action. This just happens to be that week as well as the week of this minor crisis for my family.

Those who claim the Pledge of Allegiance is something positive for teaching civics are sorely mistaken in my view. I find that the Pledge not only does not teach good civics, it does the opposite. It teaches children, even those who don’t have an issue with it, that an oath of loyalty is something akin to words everyone is forced to mumble regardless of the meaning.

It is also like dedicating an infant or toddler to a religion they don’t yet understand. An oath forced on a child is not sacred. It is instead something vile and antithetical to honor.

Even if all oaths may not be entirely voluntary even in adulthood, we as adults at least have some idea what they mean and what the consequences of not taking such an oath may be. Even if forced into an oath, an adult should do all they can to keep it. Otherwise, we should be prepared to take the consequences of not making such an oath or the consequences of breaking it. Sometimes oppressive circumstances make that a terrible choice. But we have the choice.

A child who is told, “Stand here, raise your hand and say these words,” isn’t bound by honor in that way. But the child is taught by this that oaths are cheap and meaningless mumbles. That is the wrong hidden deep in the Pledge.

It is no surprise that the more authoritarian and fascist a state is the more such rote, mumbled oaths it requires. I know it is incendiary to call the Pledge of Allegiance fascist. Clearly it is not such a terrible thing on a day to day basis. I’ve lived through it along with most other Americans. But it is akin to fascism in that it promotes the concept of the automatic, thoughtless loyalty that fascism is built upon. That is the harm in a few seconds of mumbled words at the start of the day.

Here is one of my oaths, one I mean and which I recite anew with each new moon. I don’t make my kids say it because I believe it should be fully empowered through choice.

I pledge allegiance to the goddess of compassion and strength, and to the planet earth for which she stands, one ecosystem under the moon with interconnection and hope for all.

This is the oath I hold above all others. I have, out of necessity, made sacrifices of my comfort, time, resources and safety in the protection of the earth and I expect I will be called to do so again, in accordance with this oath. That is what such a pledge of allegiance should mean, after all.

Short story: Stars for Stacy

I ask you to imagine a slightly different world. Not so different really.

Remember that ninety percent of human communication does not involve words, spoken or written. It is about tone of voice, facial expressions, body language and eye contact. We say a great many things without words, often even without realizing it. It isn’t an extra. It is the mainline of communication, the mainstream.

But in the world of this story, things are a bit different. Here ninety percent of human communication is telepathic. That’s all. People still speak and have facial expressions but perhaps they have developed to speak a bit less than we do. And the important communications—the things that truly matter—are passed directly from mind to mind.

In all other ways, this world is the same as ours. And as such, human bodies are fallible and changeable and diverse. The same diseases and injuries that affect us still exist in this telepathic world. Maybe it is a little less important if a person is blind or deaf because communication can go directly from mind to mind. Such disabilities still exist, but they become little more than a nuisance, like colorblindness or lack of the sense of smell is for people in our world.

The disease that people fear in this world, the dreaded debilitation that strikes some unlucky children, people with head injuries and the very old is called “mind blindness.” People donate teddy bears to mind-blind children, pity their parents and try not to think too hard about it.

These disabled people cannot communicate telepathically. Either fully or partially they cannot perceive or send such communication. And in a world of telepaths, this is a terrible condition.

But progress comes eventually. With technology and modernity there are steps toward acceptance. Those who were once kept hidden away in institutions are integrated… somewhat. Good-hearted people want to include and help them. The parents in the small town of Marten are even glad when the school integrates a smart mind-blind girl into a mainstream classroom.

Creative Commons image by Eric Wüstenhagen

Her name is Stacy. Stacy has wildly curly hair, a big smile and strangely disconnected-looking eyes. She doesn’t look at you when you greet her. You have to speak out loud. You have to be almost rudely explicit about everything with her. It takes extra effort and at first the teacher is reluctant to have this extra burden in her class.

But Stacy has a blocky little computer on her desk, something developed to be functional rather than handsome, to help the unfortunate who chronically have very little money. The computer roughly translates the stream of the teacher’s thoughts into words. It’s one big run-on sentence that often makes little sense. All the nuance and feeling is taken out, but she can basically understand what the teacher is trying to get across in class.

Stacy can’t perceive the comments and questions of other students with it though. The teacher wears a special receiver. It is so much better than nothing. Stacy is so happy to have it. Up until last year she was almost entirely cut off from the telepathic world and she had to go to a special school where slow-speaking teachers taught out loud and while everything was cheery, there was an underlying assumption that these children would always be disabled. The best they could hope for was “independent living skills.”

And Stacy is bright. Her teachers saw that and many people believe that with the right conditions and accommodations, she could achieve anything she sets her mind too. She is an excellent student after all, when the content is something she can hear or read.

Stacy has a special teacher too for after school. This special teacher tries to teach her coping skills, ways to get around her mind-blindness. She teachers Stacy how to read signs and cues from the bodies of others. She teaches Stacy to be extra kind and helpful to others, so that they will know that her mind-silence is not meant to be dismissive and cold, as it generally appears to others. Stacy works hard and earns stars on a chart for each milestone.

Because she’s a smiler and she tries so hard to please, some of the kids in her class invite her to go out with them. At first, it’s a thrill. They have the strange girl with them. They are curious about communication through words and gestures. Some kids like the feeling of approval from adults who are glad to see them include the disabled girl.

But it does take extra effort. And the kids find that the novelty wears off. After a while the effort of including her in communication gets old. Most stop inviting her. Sure, she smiles. Maybe a little too much, in fact. You have to say things so explicitly. She almost never gets the jokes. They don’t mean to be mean but…

There are a few who fiercely continue to invite Stacy along on group outings. She can dance so well. It’s almost as if she is saying something with the way she moves her body. But the truth is that when they have to choose a best friend to go on vacation with or someone to do a big school project with, it isn’t Stacy. She’s a friend, but not a best friend.

Sometimes Stacy does find a best friend, someone who she connects with. These are often troubled kids, teens who have been through abuse or who are shunned by the others. They don’t really want to share their every thought. They appreciate that she isn’t nosy and her out-loud chatter is a welcome distraction. But having friends who are outcasts has its own consequences.

When Stacy graduates from high school, she gets scholarships. She is still a very good student. With accommodations, she learns quickly and gobbles up knowledge. She is full of hope in those years and people point her out to their acquaintances as an “inspiration.”

“Don’t complain,” their thoughts flit from one to another as she walks by. “Think how hard it must be. If she can do it, you certainly can. She’s so brave!”

But when her fellow students have to choose partners, they still don’t choose her. Brave is one thing. The amount of work it would take to do the project with her is another.

When college is done they also don’t hire her in their companies. Brave is one thing. But every business needs networking and the human touch. She isn’t much good at interpersonal communication in this world.

Stacy wants to be a scientist and her research papers in graduate school were ground-breaking. But after she gets her degree, she can’t get a job in science. You have to meet people at conferences. And initial meetings are all about subtle telepathy. Stacy’s smile and outstretched hand ready to shake are clumsy and… well… just off.

A few of her professors, deeply impressed by her scientific work, make introductions. And that seems to work for awhile. Stacy gets a prestigious internship and finally an entry level job in her field. The sky seems like the limit and Stacy believes she can do it. She doesn’t mind that it is harder for her. She is focused on the positivity instilled in her by all those little stars she earned.

But staff reviews aren’t great even in the beginning and they go down hill. “She doesn’t greet colleagues… She is cold and aloof... She isn’t interested in working with others…” The same phrases come up a lot. Stacy remembers her special teacher and she goes out of her way to be helpful and kind to others. Some start to call her “cloying.”

She loses her job over misunderstandings and it has been a few years since she was in grad school. The old connections are lost and new ones come very hard, when she can’t do the networking circuit. She gets a few gigs doing science writing. They don’t pay much and slowly she becomes obsolete in the field. Failure stings.

She knows she was given all the opportunities, more in fact than others. She was given scholarships, special teachers and second chances. Her teachers were right. She just didn’t learn their lessens well enough.

She rents a place out of town, away from other people. It is easier if people aren’t around all the time. It takes so much energy to explain at every turn why she doesn’t do telepathy. It is exhausting to go through the social strategies she has learned to smooth it over. She turns to art made with natural materials that she gives to an old lady to sell at local fairs. This and her Social Security disability check makes a bare income.

Her art is beautiful and sometimes makes people go misty eyed. No one really points her out as an inspiration anymore though. Her smile has faded and she usually looks glum. She also talks to plants and her several cats.

Her brother and sister come to visit her with their families on occasion, but their spouses don’t really understand about her. They see her as eccentric, old before her time and not a very positive example for their children. They sit around her table as she stays mostly in the kitchen preparing food.

She loves the moment of attention and social connection she gets when she brings the food out. They’ll ooh and aah and make an effort to speak out loud for a moment. And that sends her scurrying back to make them more food. But no one thinks of her much beyond that.

One evening during such a visit, Stacy is tired from a long afternoon of cooking and she sits down at the side of the table, her fingers caressing the smooth wood of the old family dinner table. She half-listens to the conversation, the parts of it that are audible and she watches faces for the clues about what is going on under the surface.

Her sister-in-law’s face flickers and she breaks into a smile. Everyone all around the table laughs, except Stacy. She doesn’t know what the joke is as usual.

Usually, she just lets it go but sometimes she asks. And now the atmosphere seems relaxed enough, so she ventures timidly. They don’t hear her at first. The conversation is going on at the other end of the table, fast back and forth. When they do finally hear Stacy, it is jarring.

She’s interrupting. She has no sense for proper interjecting. She’s just so rude. That’s what most of them think. The way Stacy butts in shows how she isn’t even paying attention and then she wants them to pay attention to her.

Her sister who is closest to her in age does understand a bit. She knows Stacy tries and that she’s a lot more sensitive and kind than people think. She stops the raucous conversation and asks Stacy what she wanted. Stacy carefully explains.

They have to backtrack in the conversation. Her brother tries to explain the joke with words. It was a non-verbal thing though. It isn’t easy. His wife and his brother-in-law are clearly bored.

Stacy thanks them and smiles. Then she ventures to ask, “Could you speak out loud a bit more tonight.. I feel like I’ve hardly seen you this visit.”

The irritated sister-in-law turns to the others and projects the sentiment that Stacy is a bore and not very much fun. To Stacy she says, “Dear, you really should try some of these positive thinking affirmations. You know, if you could just be more like that famous actor who is mind-blind. You know. He is so gracious and such an inspiration.”

This isn’t the first time, Stacy has heard this. In fact, she’s heard this many thousands of times. And this isn’t the first exhausting conversation she has sat on the edge of while being thought to be pushy and demanding.

This probably isn’t the time when Stacy makes an outburst or cries or yells or demands to be treated like an equal. That only happens once in about a thousand similar situations. And Stacy feels guilty for those outbursts. She knows mind-blind people from her old special school for the disabled who never make a demand or an outburst. They sit quietly in their family home and make handicrafts. They make no demands. No one says they're an inspiration but neither do they blame them.

When her family goes back to their homes and leaves Stacy alone again, she is relieved. She doesn’t really like to be alone, but the truth is that it is easier than the constant struggle. And anything is preferable to those comments that tear her up inside.

Very few people in Stacy’s world ever think about a world like ours, a world where everyone is like Stacy. And if they do think it, it is just idle curiosity. What would it be like, if no one used telepathy, if all we had were five senses?

The truth is that Stacy’s world is not so far away. The sense Stacy lacks that everyone else has is no different from hearing or sight. It is one thing. She gets around without it just fine. She can do schoolwork, science, cook, be a full person in every way. She can be a great friend too. But because society is not made for people like her, her career fails and she ends up isolated.

I know dozens of Stacies all over the world. They just happen to be bright and competent and awesome and physically blind. And we live in the world we live in and most of human communication is visual. Blindness is the condition people subconsciously dread in our world. But they dread it for the wrong reasons. Physically not seeing things is a nuisance, for sure. But that’s not what leads to the isolation and despair.

Inclusion takes effort and the fact is that most people just don’t want to think too much about it.

AOC and a voice for those who were dismissed

It’s been more than fifteen years and one minute is still as clear as if it happened a moment ago.

I was attending a public comment session at a European Parliament regarding the war in Iraq, civilian casualties and the US misinformation about weapons of mass destruction. One of my closest friends at the time was an Iraqi refugee and his brother had recently been killed by American troops who mistook him for someone they were looking for. Shoot first and ask questions later… and all that.

High-ranking US military and civilian officials had come to answer questions from the European public and this was supposed to be a rare opportunity for open discussion of the issues with those who actually had the power. I managed to get a seat in the question gallery due to connections within the high-powered charity community. My US passport and press credentials didn’t hurt either.

The session lasted two hours and there was very little critical discussion allowed. Everyone had been pretty thoroughly vetted and most of the questions from the “public” were sycophantic opportunities for officials to regurgitate the Republican party line in Europe. Finally, toward the end of the session, I got one of the coveted comment spaces, and goddess, was I ever ready.

I had a stack of documented cases of avoidable civilian casualties three inches thick in my hands with my friend’s brother on top.

Public domain image

I am not good at public speaking or even speaking in general. My forte is much more the written word. I tend to choke and forget my vocabulary and stumble around without a clear goal even just trying to hold my own in a political discussion among friends. So, I had prepared for this.

I took deep breaths as I was called to stand and then I put it out there. My statement had to be phrased as a question, and it was, but it contained enough data to make clear that platitudes weren’t going to work here. The mediators were so shocked that I actually got to the end of the two sentence question before the shouting started and I was drowned out.

I had done it. The words were on the record and on national TV and I hadn’t choked. My heart was pounding. It was a tiny thing, but at least I had forced the people in power to confront the lie that this was a relatively clean war, where only the guilty suffered and the oppressed people of Iraq were supposed to be grateful for occupation and viciously negligent violence.

The officials had to spend the next ten minutes uncomfortably wriggling out of the issues I had raised. But of course, it was buried in the end. That was just all the power I had at the time.

And that isn’t actually the memory I mentioned in the first line. What stands out most clearly to me isn’t the fact that I managed to put the truth out on national TV and in front of US officials. I was standing out in the entrance hall of the Parliament after the event and I was cornered by a member of Parliament from the far left who had been trying to milk the anti-war movement for media attention without actually helping.

Several members of Parliament from the pro-US, right-wing party walked down the steps from the main hall and passed us. One of them turned around, pushed his face close to mine and sneered in a loud voice that cut through the space, “Disgusting bitch! It speaks our language!”

His cronies chuckled and they left. I stood frozen and speechless.

I had spoken in English during the public session because the guests were US officials and English was allowed. But I had been speaking Czech to the leftist MP. That was what the right-winger had meant. He was surprised that I was bilingual. But he had put it in extremely insulting grammar, calling me “it” and clearly putting me in the place of a sub-human.

His companions had laughed and the leftist MP who had pretended to be sympathetic stepped away. Far from standing up for me, he disappeared.

I was a blind woman who had the international microphone for a fleeting moment and I had been slammed back into my place with public humiliation.

No, I wasn’t surrounded by people mocking me or supporting me. I was suddenly simply dismissed. Everyone’s back seemed to be turned to me in the entrance hall. The journalists who had previously been interested in my documentation were no longer interested. I had been demoted from upstart to irrelevant and then brushed away.

That is the part that makes the memory stick so painfully—the dehumanization followed by very effective dismissal.

When Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was demeaned with sexist language on the steps of the US Capitol building last month by Congressman Ted Yoha it was the same kind of moment. It was a man in power slapping down an upstart woman, calling her a “F—ing bitch” and “disgusting.” It was eerily reminiscent of my experience all those years ago.

At first AOC didn’t respond publicly. She probably didn’t want to stoop to his level. And that is understandable. I didn’t respond either. In the moment, I choked as usual, and later when I could have thought through a response, I no longer had a microphone or any platform to speak of.

But I very much appreciate Ocasio-Cortez’s words from the House floor several days later. She laid the issue out in no uncertain terms. Having experienced much the same thing in public and a lot of less-public abuse over forty-four years of being a disabled woman, I know exactly what she meant when she said, “It’s cultural.”

It wasn’t just about me being a woman or disabled, of course. I was a political opponent of that rude MP. But he did not and would not—particularly in the somewhat more staid European context—treat a man like that.

Ocasio-Cortez said, “Men harass women daily and feel they can go unpunished,” I know exactly what she means.

I have often wished I had the platform, the mficrophone and the power to talk back and to verbally tear up sexist, ablest and racist bullies in public. But the truth is I don’t have the seat-of-the-pants eloquence either, not in spoken words at least. Ocasio-Cortez has that and she now has the microphone and the platform too. She uses it well and I’m one more woman cheering her on.

Alexandria Ocaso-Cortez continues to be a voice for those of us who have been dismissed and trampled too many times. And she is one of those who reminds me there is still much worth fighting for.

The exuberant flourishing of summer

There is a bulging, bursting, vining, tangling, wild spirit in my garden. Or I should say there are a myriad of spirits in my garden.

The middle of a summer with enough moisture is the time when it is the easiest for me to have an animist worldview. It is easy to see the will power and personality of each different kind of plant and animal. It is easy to relate to them as members of a family to which I too belong because they are so full of life.

Image by Arie Farnam

Our ducks have produced babies and the tiny speckled ducklings hop and tumble through the riotous foliage in the corners of the garden.

The combination of long, warm summer days and enough rain makes for an abundance that is overwhelming and often too much. At some unremarked tipping point, my job went from trying to coax plants and animals toward thriving to the tough love of cutting away the excess, sometimes with tender care, sometimes in wide slashes.

Many things grow better when they are trimmed back. The tomatoes would quickly mold and rot without my careful pruning. Many of the herbs would just lie in tangled, bug-infested heaps if I didn’t trim them. And of course, there is a profusion of weeds that would gladly overtake and shade useful plants if I let them.

But I don’t cut where I don’t have to. That is a common mistake among modern gardeners and farmers. There is an assumption that just because I don’t need that plant. it shouldn’t grow. But the fact is that this flourishing, bountiful life force abhors bare soil. There is nothing so unnatural as bare dirt in a mid-summer garden.

So, wherever I can, I let something cover it. I may pick and choose and weed out but something ends up covering the soil.

This year it sometimes pains me to cut back exuberant plants that are not strangling weeds. The past three years brought drought and while weeds grew where I watered, my garden was not nearly so lush. After a time of scarcity we have a tendency to allow excess, even to the point that it isn’t healthy.

My husband says this summer is the way summers were here when he was a kid—several days of sun and then thunderstorms and drenching rain. Artificial irrigation was once almost unknown in Central Europe. Farmers used to say the lightning made the fields fertile and apparently there is a bit of scientific truth in that, beyond just the fact that after lightning comes the rain.

This year our garden is a little bit much. Everything is growing like crazy, spilling out of containers and beds. I frantically pull weeds, clip and mow and still barely keep ahead of a green tide that threatens to overwhelm me. Untended areas have turned into impenetrable jungles of brush and herbage six to ten feet high.

I sense the plants as I move about the garden, each one has a distinct spirit. Some are eager, some pushy. Some are much more timid and delicate. But they are all aware of each other. That doesn’t mean they won’t take over the space and strangle out a less assertive plant. There is a harmony here, but it isn’t entirely equitable. And neither am I.

Still I don't sense resentment from the plants that I cut away anymore than I feel that the invasive weeds mean to be aggressive. We are just all in it for survival. Ascribing spirit to plants doesn’t mean anthropomorphizing them. Plants are plants not humans and they view the world from that perspective.

This wild, luscious growth is an expression of the plants natural state of being. Their desire for life and growth doesn’t negate their interconnection and a deeper understanding that every other part of the garden is connected and necessary, even the woman who weeds and clips.

Compassion and politics in the time of coronavirus

This is not the post I want to write today. I feel like I’m watching my country disintegrate. Throughout all the crises in the past thirty years, the situation in the United States has never felt more desperate, and I wish I could write only words of encouragement and hope.

In these days of coronavirus, racist violence, political tyranny and thoughtless posturing, we wish we had a president like Theodore Rosevelt or Abraham Lincoln, one who would call the country to courage and mutual aid. My home town was recently hit with a massive spike in COVID-19 infection because of the unwise and politically motivated actions of church leaders, including laying on of hands to heal the sick and large group events.

Among most people I know, there is so much fear. Fear of the virus. Fear about the election. Fear over lost jobs and economic collapse. Fear of the police. Fear of rioters. Fear of people with guns. Fear of people reacting to fear.

And yet the thing that makes me most afraid isn’t coming from strangers or Republicans or a virus. It’s the desperation and anger numbing those people I identify with most to suffering other than that specifically sanctioned by the cause. And that’s why this isn’t just an encouraging post about banishing fear.

Creative Commons image by Matthew Kenwrick

I can’t speak for American conservatives and Republicans, but those of us who are in the US called “liberals” or “progressives” like to think of ourselves as the good guys. I mean we really REALLY like to think of ourselves as the compassionate, nicer side of the political divide.

I don’t mean that we just think that we’re right. I assume everyone thinks they’re right. But we also think we’re nice and empathetic too. It comes with the political territory.

And I am not above this hubris. I not only think that being anti-racist, pro-universal health care, proactive on climate change, anti-corporate and so forth are all factually and morally correct. I also think these positions are more compassionate than the alternatives available.

Those who call themselves “conservatives” often make noises about how compassion is good and all, but sacrifices must be made for some other greater good, usually economic prosperity, and that it is more important to ensure that people who work hard get what they deserve than it is to be compassionate for those seen as being less hard working.

Every issue that comes up in America is supposed to be drawn between these lines. So, when Trump belittled the threat of COVID-19 and delayed the US response to it, liberals and progressives were quick to raise the flags of compassion for those most vulnerable to the virus.

In Europe the political sides haven’t been so clearly drawn on COVID-19. Many liberals cautioned against draconian lockdown measures that were likely to harm the most vulnerable and conservative goverments enforced lockdowns, workplace and school closures as well as masks. Europe has a culture in which listening to doctors and scientists is the default, regardless of one’s political stance—at least in theory.

Large scale lockdowns were enforced for more than two months in most places and they proved effective, even in places like Sweden where personal social distancing wasn’t mandated for those at low risk. Except for parts of Italy and Spain where the virus struck before it was even remotely understood, Europe has avoided chaos and massive death tolls.

Over time, European doctors have determined which measures are most effective and which are unnecessary or have harmful side effects, and some measures have been phased out. In the US media and blogosphere there is a lot of discussion about how masks and social distancing are likely here to stay, even beyond a specific vaccine for COVID-19.

But Europeans have loosened up interpersonal interaction already in favor of large scale-social distancing in shopping centers, public transportation, mass events, crowded factories and other hotbeds of contagion. Interpersonal interaction was relaxed a month ago where I live and no spike in COVID-19 cases has resulted.

The Atlantic divide has meant that I get some flak from American friends for discussing which measures have been phased out locally due to nasty side effects or ineffectiveness. I find myself with a sudden, uncomfortable insight into why conservatives often scoff at liberal claims to compassion because of our vehement (and yeah, sometimes self-righteous) insistence on particular social norms.

In American liberal circles, it is mandatory to be compassionate about the two to four percent of the population (depending on the strength of your healthcare system), who could die from COVID-19. It is not so encouraged to be compassionate about people with anemia and other blood-oxygen conditions who are at risk while wearing masks or about the relatively young and healthy people who have experienced cardiac arrest due to attempting to run or cycle wearing a mask or about the countless people pushed into psychological instability and suicide risk due to extreme isolation.

It is not okay in liberal circles to voice compassionate concern over the people hit by the economic crisis, if that entails any criticism of COVID-prevention measures. Voicing compassionate concern for people who cannot stay home with their children and survive at the same time is not much encouraged.

It isn’t good to mention that social distancing, which we blithely predict will be permanent, is devastating people who are already socially isolated due to mental illness or disability. It is definitely not okay to talk about the rising tide of suicide figures or to compare any of this to the number of COVID-19 deaths, which while equally terrible, are still a small fraction of the preventable deaths in our society. (And I’ll get flak for that statement alone, despite the facts.)

While I do think I’m personally compassionate, I have never felt that this requires tolerance and empathy for everyone. I am not tolerant toward intolerance and never have been. I am not even very compassionate toward people who are clearly suffering under a burden of too much privilege and too little introspection. But still the current compassion exclusivity is disturbing, even more so because it is fueled by feelings of desperation and political anger.

It has become more about politics than about compassion. Compassion is now rarely referenced unless it suits the cause. Do we truly care about protecting the vulnerable or just about combatting Trump and his supporters, because of everything else Trumpism has brought?

Each camp in the US wields the virus like a political weapon. The conservatives are suddenly into hugging strangers in crowds. (Just imagine explaining that to a time traveler from a year ago.) And liberals are into putting a cold hand in the face of anyone who doesn’t wear a mask, regardless of the circumstances.

It isn’t hard to generate empathy for my freaking-out liberal friends and family. This is a depressing year for American liberals and progressives. We are facing a grim election in which all we can hope for is the defeat of a horrible regime by a somewhat less horrible one and we won’t succeed even at that unless we can muster a lot of enthusiasm for it. That likely plays into the politicization of COVID-19 response.

But even so, the speed with which we began erecting walls on compassion leaves me cold. In some ways this is lonelier than all the months of coronavirus lockdown.

Given my vision impairment, social distancing and masks really do mean that I can’t interact with people in person. If people sit six feet away, I can no longer sense their mood or emotions. If people wear masks, their voices are usually so muffled that I can’t hear the non-verbal cues. I can pay for groceries, but I can’t have a real conversation.

Sitting close, an occasional hand on a shoulder, the subtle tones of voice—that’s my version of eye contact. Social distancing has taken that away entirely. And I’m told it will never be back.

I worry about the people with disabilities like mine who don’t have a spouse and kids at home. If social distancing is here to stay, will they never feel the touch of a human hand again? So many people with disabilities live alone without a lot of family or community support. People talk big about caring, but the truth is that mostly people only hang out with those they think are popular, successful and attractive enough.

A lot of people who are just as friend-worthy fall through the cracks even in normal times. And now… I don’t even want to contemplate it.

I am not saying we shouldn’t do social distancing or wear masks. In many places, particularly in the US right now, we have to. Listen to medical advice. Be careful particularly in areas hard hit by the virus. But let’s also sit a moment in stillness and think on what protecting the vulnerable really means.

I’m not saying you have to empathize with everyone. Compassion fatigue is a thing and likely part of the culprit here.

If someone is flaunting risky behavior—forcing people into hugs, breathing in people’s faces in public, intentionally creating large gatherings to make a political point—you’ll have to protect yourself first and save compassion for those who are just struggling. Still, a less biting reaction toward conservatives might just help them come down off of their very dangerous wall on COVID-prevention.

Most importantly, let’s think about compassion for those who fall through the cracks in these very troubled times. Let’s be gentle. Let’s include as much as we can. Let’s remember that human contact is a basic human need. Long-term denial of human contact has documented, medical effects and can eventually lead to death, and not just through suicide.

My class of mostly elderly women studying English as a foreign language met just once last month. I offered my veranda, which has a table and chairs and a canopy of lush grape leaves. Attendance was definitely voluntary, given that several students are over seventy and one over eighty. But everybody came. They seemed very much in need of the in-person connection.

One of the students has a husband who has had a bone-marrow transplant and is at substantial immunological risk. She sat an extra distance from the rest of the group and we all wore masks at first. But then several students are hard of hearing and they rely on watching my mouth for English pronunciation. I was also having a lot of difficulty hearing the students and reading their level of comprehension with the masks and the distance.

In the end, the one with the vulnerable husband and the one who is a nurse decided we could do without the masks but remain at a distance. Everyone was gentle and considerate.

As the teacher, I am able to set the tone in these classes and I have always set a standard in which everyone’s needs are heard and cared for. If compromise is made, it is initiated by those most vulnerable and not imposed upon them. I think it is part of why the same students come back year after year.

Most of my European students would likely identify themselves as conservatives, though they take universal health care for granted and are serious about COVID-19. I wish their culture of consideration was more widespread in all political camps.

We are living with terrible risks every day. COVID-19 is just one more factor. It isn’t a small one, but it isn’t the only one by far. Saying “we are all in this together” should mean more than just thoughts and prayers. It should mean real care for those hit hard by the virus and by our attempts to combat the virus.