Dutch Treat

Kudos to the voters in the Netherlands for learning from our mistake.

Digging in their wooden heels, they pulled back on the shift toward right wing populism and chose, for the time being, to find a more palatable way to preserve their national character without falling into the abyss. Who woulda thunk it? The Dutch?

Not so surprising. I have never been to the Netherlands, unless you count a layover in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport (which I had dubbed, at the time, the "Shithole" Airport for reasons that had nothing to do with a lack of comfort or amenities). I remember signs filled with vaguely familiar words made slightly exotic with oddly placed double-letters and and occasional guttural "cht." I remember how genuinely pleasant the people seemed, as a rule, and I remember shops filled with every kind of cheese imaginable, and then some.

It was nothing more than a "flyover" country to me, back then. Quaint, quiet, with storybook houses and ancient windmills and shoes with no give.  Easy to forget it's the birthplace of Van Gogh, and  the hiding place for Anne Frank. Extraordinary art, an extraordinary girl, extraordinary ordinary Dutch citizens risking their own lives to hide a small cache of doomed Jews. And, now, a surprising hero in the pull back from xenophobia and other garden variety hatreds sweeping though the West.

Maybe there is a silver lining to all this madness. Not the one a stranger pointed out, the other day, when he told me I should stop whining about 45. Yes, he's a despicable person, but our 401(k)'s are thriving. Maybe so, but at what price?

Yes, he's a despicable person, the stranger went on, but I'm not being persecuted, so why do I care? And no matter how many racists have corner offices in the West Wing, local police has all that nonsense under control. The spike in burning crosses may be, at least in part, the federal government's fault, but it's not the federal government's problem. And, I suppose, until a relative's grave gets vandalized or someone I know gets thrown over the wall or my daughters no longer make the rules for their own bodies, it's not my problem either. Give him a chance, he said, bewildered that I had yet to grasp how it is in my best interest to do so.

I have no choice but to "give him a chance." At least in the sense that I don't have the power to physically remove him from the Oval Office and stuff him back under a rock. Not my problem? Maybe. But if I get complacent, I am complicit. It may not be my problem. but it becomes my fault.

The silver lining, I think, is the awakening of sleeping giants and sleeping not-so-giant folks. The Netherlands, at least, got the wake up call. I'm going Dutch.

Fake News: My Big, Fat, Beautiful Eye Cream

I was so close. 

The escalator was within spitting distance when she caught me in her cross hairs. (I could swear she grabbed my arm, but I pretty sure that kind of thing is frowned upon in the employee manual.) A minute and a half, she told me. That's all she would need to give my face a lift. Not that it needed one, of course. 

I thought about this when my friend, texting occasional reports from her royal-watching perch somewhere near Buckingham Palace, informed me she had just bought something called 90th birthday creamer. (This was after she shut me down for what could have been construed as a disrespectful comment about the Queen's vitality). The Queen rocks, she scolded. And then she told me about the creamer. 

Back to this side of the pond, to the wrinkle Nazi. To make a long story short, I took the bait, and, after enduring about 45 minutes of gentle insults delivered with surgical precision by the flawlessly skinned Brianna, I skulked off with a shopping bag filled with miracle ointments and droppers and written instructions about how best to achieve the miraculous non-surgical plumping of my lifeless face.  

Fast forward. It's been three days, and the only detectable plumping in my face is the red blotches. Well, to be fair, the ones in the dark crescents under my eyes are closer to purple. Note to self: text my friend in London, tell her to throw in a few jars of the 90th birthday creamer. Right now, I'd give anything to look as youthful as the Queen. 

Well shame on me for being sold a bill of goods. Again. I hate to admit it, but this was not my first (or even second) rodeo with the likes of the wrinkle Nazi and the flawless Brianna. They had me -- and my Achilles heel -- pegged, and I fell for it, just like they knew I would. It was less about the obviously false promise of smooth skin and filled in wrinkles than the unsubtle reminder of how dire my situation was. Bad, very bad. I had nothing to lose. 

I am off to buy some cucumbers and Vaseline (get your minds out of the gutter) so I can soothe my irritated eyes and flaming cheeks. The best I can hope for is to be no worse off than when I started, before I got caught in the cross hairs. And, of course, I await my jar of false hope, from across the pond. 

A View from the (Brooklyn) Bridge

Growing up in Brooklyn, I assumed that what was familiar was normal. Accents that suggested illiteracy, childhood games played on punishing concrete with an occasional death defying dash into the softer turf of roads filled with oncoming traffic, subway stations that smelled like urine.

Sounds rough, I suppose, but there was order, and there was predictability. Dad walking in the door at six, dinner on the table at 6:02 -- fruit, salad, broiled meat or fish, a vegetable, potato, my favorite cake from the local bakery. One slice only. The world beyond, a world without portion control -- or any noteworthy restrictions, really -- caught me by surprise, left me fat, directionless, confused.

My brother and I used to tinker with the notion that maybe our way of life was not "normal," that maybe other families did things differently, that maybe our family was actually crazy. Even if we thought it was possible, we happily dismissed the idea. There is comfort in the knowledge, however misguided, that you are at least somewhere on the spectrum of what is typical.

Sure, there were hints along the way. At fifteen, on a cross country bus tour with other teenagers from my neck of the woods, I remember overhearing some locals comment on us as we straggled into an eatery somewhere between Nebraska and California. Must be from New Jersey, they whispered. Okay, close enough. Jewish, I heard. Okay, not 100 per cent, but again, close enough. How did they know? I glanced over at them, the locals who lived somewhere between Nebraska and California, and they didn't look all that different to me. Maybe they would have, had I spotted them trying to blend in on Avenue J.

Then there was college, a world relatively low on folks who said things like cawwwfee and chawwwcolate or added a gratuitous "r" to the end of my name. A world filled with kids who already drove their own fancy cars and had never smelled a subway and who knew what it was like to play in a field of grass without being shipped off for eight weeks during the summer. A world with loose schedules and no portion control. By the time I graduated, I had acquired a hybrid accent, friends from small towns who had never before met a Jew, and a good forty extra pounds.

My idea of normal has long since undergone a significant overhaul, and I have adjusted to a world where I can celebrate differences and sameness and, no matter what, always seem to find common ground. At least until recently. I worry about our new normal, where lies are treated as truths and it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between the two. Where mainstream is viewed as subversive and what once may have appeared to be abnormal -- if not outrageous -- has become acceptable, quite fashionable even.

I feel fat, directionless, confused. I am tinkering with the notion that maybe my way, and the way of many I know, is not normal. That what I have always believed to be sane might actually be crazy. Finding myself in a world that has become a veritable smorgasbord of bat shit craziness, I yearn for the days of portion control.

That Ain't America

The irony wafted over me, like a dark cloud.

Ain't that America...home of the free.... As cynical as John Mellencamp intended the song to be, freedom was our saving grace. Behind the facade of our pink houses, life often wasn't easy, and it certainly wasn't fair. But nobody ever doubted who we are, or at least who we were intended to be.

As I half dozed in a Tequila and sun-drenched fog on a Mexican beach, I wondered if somebody had cued up the song to mock us, temporary escapees from an America nobody recognizes. A land of white picket fences gone mad, a dream turned into a nightmare of xenophobia and racism and anti-Semitism and anti-LGBT and anti-choice and anti-pretty-much-everything that isn't white and some twisted notion of what is Christian. They shake their heads down here, incredulous. Believe me, I want to tell them, to borrow an empty phrase. It's really happening, and it's worse than you think.

Down here, sunshine and swim-up bars, a seemingly limitless supply of great restaurants, and spotty cell phone reception have shielded me from non-stop cable punditry and "breaking news" alerts. I have not seen a White House press briefing for a week; perhaps Melissa McCarthy is now dispensing one-liners to all who have been excluded from the gaggle of propagandists behind the newly installed iron curtains. Today, in America, anything is possible, and I don't mean that in a positive "aim high" sort of way.

The bar has become so low for "45" that if he manages to read a speech written by someone else without foaming at the mouth or insulting anybody in particular he is applauded for his gentle tone. The details? Yawn. Nobody really cares about the details. He is being presidential. Walk by the Lincoln Memorial; I bet he has his head in his hands.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch on Pennsylvania Avenue, the likes of Steve Bannon are pulling the strings. Rocks have been overturned, and all sorts of despicable ideas have been brought out into daylight. Hate is emboldened. It is now okay to persecute Muslims (or anybody brown); it is now fashionable to desecrate Jewish cemeteries; it is now cool to persecute anybody with a "different" sexual orientation, and it is realistic to think that our three branches of government will soon be sufficiently tainted to allow these creatures who have crawled out from under rocks to undo almost two and a half centuries of really good work in progress.

Ain't that America? Ain't my America, that's for sure. Speaking at John Mellencamp's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, Billy Joel said this:

Don't let this club membership change you, John. Stay ornery, stay mean. We need you to be pissed off, and restless because no matter what they tell us—we know this country is going to hell in a handcart. This country's been hijacked. You know it, and I know it. People are worried. People are scared, and people are angry. People need to hear a voice like yours that's out there to echo the discontent that's out there in the heartland. They need to hear stories about it. They need to hear stories about frustration, alienation and desperation. They need to know that somewhere out there somebody feels the way that they do in the small towns and in the big cities. They need to hear it. And it doesn't matter if they hear it on a jukebox, in the local gin mill, or in a goddamn truck commercial because they ain't gonna hear it on the radio any more. They don't care how they hear it as long as they hear it good and loud and clear the way you've always been saying it all along. You're right, John, this is still our country.

It's time to come out of our little pink houses, to listen clearly and to get loud.

Montezuma's Revenge

It's my first trip to Mexico since we started building walls.

Back in the day, for a brief moment, I may have thought it best that I stay on my side of the Rio Grande, but that was about bacteria, not people. Montezuma sent me fleeing northward a bit early on my honeymoon, but I've long since recovered from that case of the runs, and have happily returned to Mexico countless times since then.

Bad chicken salad. A failed marriage. All distant memories, blurred by the rosy haze of time. I was young, with so much adventure still ahead, and only a handful of bad decisions under my belt. Like the chicken salad and the spouse, I suppose. Mostly, I remember the cloudless skies, the flower petals in the pool, and then, building life, expanding our brood, learning about what really mattered.

Mexico remained a staple -- sometimes for much needed adult getaways, more often for family vacations. The sounds of birds chirping on early spring days in Chicago bring to mind fond memories of morning strolls with babies, before the sun got too hot. If I close my eyes, I can almost hear the whisper of the ocean in the whirr of traffic. The mere hint of a Spanish accent gives me a tequila like buzz.

The walls are intended to keep them out of here, not me out of there. But I wonder whether I will feel as welcome this time when I land, once I get past all the time share hawkers. The citizens of Mexico -- particularly in the beach towns -- have always appeared happy to see us. I know it has a lot to do with cash, but still, there has always seemed to be a genuine dose of warmth attached to the transactions. We are friendly neighbors. Were.

On every beach, there has always been at least one man who walks the length of shoreline all day, a mountain of hats balanced atop his head. I marvel at his endurance as I sweat wearing nothing more than a bathing suit and a little bit of sunblock. I marvel at his work ethic, and I wonder how he makes enough money each day to feed his family. Somehow, he does, and, somehow, he is always smiling.

I wonder if the man on the beach wearing all those hats will smile at us this year, or whether there will be an air of distrust, or betrayal. I am, for the first time in my life, embarrassed to be an American -- and not just because I am loud and entitled and expect everyone in foreign countries to speak my language. I feel that if I am still welcomed with smiles, it is undeserved.

I will be asleep by the time we fly over the Rio Grande, and will miss any signs of a glinting wall. The idea of it, though, makes me sad.

With Cinnamon Rolls Like These....

Years ago, I was strolling past the Swedish American Museum in Chicago with a friend. Never trust a Swede, my friend told me, laughing. His mother had always told him that.

He had never taken her advice seriously, but the narrative had stuck. As far as he knew, mom had known one Swede one time who had behaved badly, at least once. Given that I know very little about Sweden or its citizens, I felt unqualified to weigh in on the validity of my friend's mother's opinion, but I was skeptical. Moments later, undeterred, I wolfed down a few of the best cinnamon rolls on earth (in my opinion) at Ann Sathers, my favorite (only) Swedish greasy spoon diner, just down the street.

With Sweden now on 45's no fly-to list, I'm starting to wonder just a little bit about the new President's relationship with the facts. Especially since he has since attributed his allusion to extreme catastrophe in Sweden to a news report he saw on the telly, and he has pretty much told us that all news is fake and the press is public enemy numero uno. Bad hombres.

I remember watching an interview with Reince Priebus a lifetime ago, before he crossed over from being just a garden variety politician to the president's chief harlot (with no offense intended to harlots). I figured he couldn't be all bad, with his loving wife whom he met in church and their seemingly well-cared-for children. Now I wonder who will take care of his brood when he goes down in flames with his boss. I watched him yesterday, twisting himself into a pretzel to explain how all negative press about his pimp is bogus, distracting the rest of us from important issues. Like how Sweden is under siege? I wonder if Reince yearns for the days when he was just a low level political hack.

45's crack team of advisors has supplied him with countless out-of-context quotes from former presidents so he can support his condemnation of the press as an institution and stoke the outrage of his gaggle of supporters as they follow him down the dirty path to autocracy. If you don't like the message, shoot the messenger. A misguided strategy, to be sure, but certainly expedient.

I have a sudden craving for sticky cinnamon rolls, Maybe I'll top it off with a bit of shawarma and a side of tabbouleh. Surprisingly, I haven't lost my appetite.

One State, Two States, Red State Blue State

Dr. Seuss, roll over.

One fish, two fish; one state, two states -- apparently, it matters not, at least not to us. "Our" new president, putting the artfulness of his deal making on full display; "our" president, consensus builder, Mr. "Let's Just All Get Along." Whatever makes both sides happy. So nice.

A friend of mine who has been far more judicious and quiet on Facebook than I was moved, yesterday, to shout out a well-earned atta boy to the Fox news anchor who came out swinging at fake news and, more pointedly, our pathologically lying president. Amid the many thumbs up and the approving comments was a harsh rebuke from a "friend" of hers. Stop all the mean talk! Barack Obama was a complete idiot, and nobody complained about him this way. Note to self: research lunatic rants from former U.S. presidents other than Nixon.

My friend, meanwhile, did not engage, other than to mention that, as Americans, we have always enjoyed a right to voice our opinions and out dissent. I have long admired her for her wicked forehand, her punishing backhand, her keen and self-deprecating sense of humor, and her fierce devotion to her family. Now, I just love her a little bit more.

It's bad enough that we somehow have a president who is perfectly happy to tell journalists to shut up and sit down when they fail to ask a "simple question" (i.e. one he likes), who proudly reveals his assumption that all black people know each other while proclaiming he is the least racist person he knows, and who responds to most questions with rambling reminiscences of an exaggerated electoral college win. A president who has called all journalists liars. Nixon on steroids: I am not a crook. Everybody else is a crook. It's bad enough that we have an emboldened Republican Congress that is too busy drooling about its agenda to care that it is endorsing and enabling an unprincipled megalomaniac who has bullied his way into the Oval Office. It's bad enough that there are enough folks out there in this country, our country, who have been liberated by this man, unleashed to voice their racism and hatred and staggering ignorance because a shameless privileged man-child in a tuxedo has somehow convinced them he is on their side. Sure, he gives a shit about them, to the extent they handed him a golden ticket to the ultimate notch on his bedpost.

Yes, it's all bad enough. But what makes it worse -- far worse -- is that so many other people have decided it's okay to look the other way. We have become a nation of folks who think it's okay to look out for number one, even at the expense of, well, everything. Liberty, the planet, civility, for starters. Another "friend" of a friend shouted a response to a Facebook plea for an end to the insanity: Look at the markets! He's doing a great job. Give him a chance. Stop being a sore loser. 

The markets. I think about Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, twirling precariously on rotted beams in an old barn while a hateful government works tirelessly to make him and his ilk disappear. If I were a rich man....  He fantasizes as he tap dances on the precipice, of life as he knows it -- not well heeled, but well lived. "Our" president pops into coal country on his way to a weekend of exclusive clubbing, beckons miners to the podium to attest to his greatness. Do they really believe that he will make them rich? And, more importantly, do they really believe that is the answer? Tevye knew two things: he would never be rich, and, even if he were, that would not solve the real problem.

One state, two states? Let them do whatever makes them all happy -- he actually said that, as if that is  a thing that exists. Why take a side when you can be on everybody's side? The truth is, he is on nobody's side -- except his own. We need more brave souls to stand up for what's right, red fish and blue fish seeing past the colors, past the agenda. It's a matter of survival.