Ahoy!

Dear Martin – Please excuse the informality. I know I should have said “Dr. King.” That is how I was raised – to be formal, respectful, traditional. But, somehow, I feel a connection to you (not the first or last time you’ve heard that I’m sure), so I hope you’ll forgive my presumption. First off, Happy Birthday. I know today is the “official” celebration of your birth, but on my calendar I noted the actual date last week, January 15. 90 years old – wow: so much living packed into nine decades. Well, of course, packed into 39 years, actually.   Do you ever think about that? 39 years in life, and 51 years in death, and still so much work to be done? Do you ever get discouraged? I do. I mean, really: in Mississippi and Alabama, today they also celebrate Robert E. Lee’s birthday (he turned 212 on Saturday, but I imagine you weren’t invited to that party) “simultaneously” with yours. Oh please. I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia – Capital of the Confederacy – so I kno...

The Bully’s Pulpit — by David Perry The bully pulpit has never been bullier: nor the Senate, the House and now the Supreme Court.  That’s a lot of bull, ah bullying . There are bullies in stores: witness this week’s tale of a white lady berating two Spanish speakers for, well, speaking.  There are bullies online — although I’m sure First Immigrant Melania’s “Be Best Ignore the Rest” campaign will put a stop to that any midterm now. There are bullies on the Left and bullies on the Right, but not so much in the middle since breaking up a civil-less war generally requires something approaching balance in the Farce that has become our body blow of political debase, ah debate . Bullying vs. Debate. That is the choice. Every day in this increasingly rank race to the dumpster that is our surreal reality we must choose: reaching out or raging on; punching down or standing up. Everyone, it seems, is justifiably, mouth-sputteringly angry. Admittedly, there is...

I’m exhausted. I admit it. Plus, most everyone I know is exhausted too. The nonstop “hive brain” of social media, the tweets too tart,   the Facebooks too far, the TV ad infinitum.  InstagramInstagramInstagram. It’s all just too, too much.  I remember reading as a child that the average human only uses 10 % of his brain — even geniuses. That said, even if I approached that benchmark, my unused 90-95% is bone tired and the minority in use even more so. Like the android Data in “Star Trek”,  if only I had an off switch. I love life - my life and life in general. I love my husband. I love my family, friends and field of work. I love the power and beauty of words and the passions they express and the wisdoms to which they aspire.  Lately, however, I have fallen into the trap of (as the Emperor says to Mozart in the film “Amadeus”) “too many notes.” Too many words. Too many opinions. Too many outrages about which to be outraged. I’m worded out. Pol...

A friend of mine — a mentor, really —  now sadly deceased -- used to say after Gay Pride Parade # 5434: "I'm so over the rainbow" as in "been there, done that - got the t-shirt, move on." I admit, I was beginning to feel that way too, but today -- actually, since Trump's election -- I've changed my rainbow tune. We don't need less "Gay Pride" we need more, and by more, I mean more people: gay,  non-gay, trans, bi, straight, black, brown, immigrant, poor, frightened and afraid - EVERYONE and ANYONE that feels threatened (which should be pretty much anyone except straight white men who espouse 'Christianity') by the Trump Administration. Today's "Pride" March was its usual polyglot of colors and creeds and agendas. But, today, I realized, while the catalyst and theme may be LGBT, the reason for the march was very red, white & blue Americana: a burst of laughter and humor and bawdiness and celebration in the mid...

Blood and Water “Are you too good to join the Army? Who do you think you are? I never went to college.” After 40 years, the words still sting: big brother reaction to my little brother excitement at university acceptance. “Who do you think you are?” I worshipped my brother: at 15 years my senior even more of an imposing idol than most “big brothers.” He taught me to swim, and once when I fell in the pool before that lesson — promptly sinking to the bottom — he dove in and saved my life.  He gave me my first car and then took me to a snow-laden parking lot at Willow Lawn Shopping Center to show me how to survive a skid: “steer into the swerve, not against it. If you jerk the wheel too hard, you’ll flip the car.” Two years later on a rainy New York State Thruway driving to college, my beloved brother-bestowed-car hit a nail and blew a tire.  “Steer into the swerve,” and I did — terrified — but survived. My bother saved my life — again. “Are you...

An Uncomfortable Art The hypnotic music from my DC days — my 20s / the ‘80s — drew me across the expanse of galleries at LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA): Bronski Beat’s “Small Town Boy” — a melancholic anthem for a generation of young gay men seeking love amid the loneliness of AIDS in that dark ruin of a Reaganesque era.  I walked closer until a red curtain warning of “graphic content” stopped me from instant entry. Once behind the curtain, a wizard of MoCA’s permanent collection confronted me: the 42-minute-long photo-with-music montage that is Nan Goldin’s “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” (1983 - 2008). I stayed for every minute — for every often disturbingly yet always intimate image. I kept wondering — how did she get these images, these brutally honest, often ugly but somehow hypnotically beautiful snapshots of gritty humanity? The soundtrack rolled on and I was left strangely moved. In another gallery, an even more unsettling  display: “Chromatic ...

“We must flee, as we are now in the clutches of a wolf,” said then Cardinal Giovanni di Medici in 1492 upon the election of the notorious Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI. As this was a period during which papal enemies often took unexpectedly ultimate swims in the Tiber (including Borgia’s own son some years later) flee Medici did, eventually to return and become a rather wolfish pope himself, Leo X. Since November 9, 2016,  I have often recalled that quote: obvious to me — and I believe, to most thinking, humanist people — that Trump was a singularly dangerous wolf. Like a feral canine, he lives only to eat, kill, mate and survive. And like a lupine predator, DJT leads a pack of lesser, subservient wolves. Unfortunately for the United States — and the world — many voters (for and against) saw in Trump an aging dog in sheep-killer clothing: all bark and no bite.   Alas, after almost a year-and-a-half since 11/9, Trump has proven (as if anyone who had followed his...