Can You Believe This?

A Facebook friend shared a copied post from Linda who told about her mother who knew a nurse who supposedly submitted unused coronavirus tests that came back positive. Linda concluded: “it’s beyond greed and money for hospitals.” My friend wondered: “is this true?”

My first rule of thumb on gossip, whether face-to-face or through social media, is this: consider the source. Who is Linda? According to her profile, Linda is a white-haired woman in leopard print who quotes Diamond and Silk: “Are we all being played, hoodwinked and bamboozled? You be the judge.”

But the source of this report isn’t Linda. No, it was posted by someone else whose mother supposedly knew a nurse, and Linda just copied it, blacking out the name. Her rationale for posting: “I don’t forward posts unless I see them and feel led.” 

Just this week, a major furniture company was accused of child trafficking because their website listed expensive industrial cabinets and overpriced pillows. Now, thousands of concerned consumers are ready to boycott the company because “I think it’s true.” “It’s disgusting.” The original source? Newsweek traced it to a Princess Peach, a Reddit user. I wonder if Princess Peach knows Linda?

A second rule of thumb to determine what is true is this: does this fit with what I know about the world? Is the coronavirus just fake news invented by the Dems to control the next election? In this case, what I do know is that my friend in New Jersey died from complications of the coronavirus. Nick Cordero, a Broadway actor whose wife is a dear friend of my neighbor, died of the coronavirus. Is it all a dream like the Wizard of Oz, and I will wake up someday, pinching myself in relief? No. The coronavirus is real.

A third way to consider the truth of a particular theory is to ask, might there be another reasonable explanation? If a pillow is listed at $999, is it possible the seller made a mistake in pricing? As in forgetting a decimal point? If a website lists fourteen million items, could the name of a missing child somewhere in the world possibly be associated with a product without implicating it in a trafficking conspiracy? Consider the core of Ockham’s Razor, first posited by William of Ockham: other things being equal, simpler explanations are generally better than more complex ones.

Please understand. Child sex trafficking is horrendous. The coronavirus is horrendous. We must do all we can as a society to stop the spread of both. But the cavalier way that conspiracy theories are inspired, spewed and relentlessly shared tends to make these bad situations even worse.

Remember Pizzagate? It began with hacked e-mails spread by Wikileaks, with supposedly coded trafficking messages, calling attention to a pizza parlor’s logo “resembling” satanic symbols. Edgar Welch thought it made perfect sense, so he traveled to D.C. with an AR-15 rifle to shoot up the pizza place and rescue the trafficked children held  captive in the basement. Except there was no basement, no trafficked children. When asked about her part in promoting the conspiracy, one writer said: “I really have no regrets and it’s honestly really grown our audience.” Wow. 

Tim Marcin commented on the accused furniture company. “Again, the internet has churned out a wild, potentially hurtful conspiracy theory that caught fire with scant evidence. Just another day online. People find a coincidence, or something odd, then twist and dig for more coincidences, and before you know it, people are jumping to wild conclusions.”

Feeling led to share like Linda? The following counsel is attributed to Rumi, an ancient poet and mystic. “Before you speak, [or tweet or post – my addition] let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, ‘is it true?’ At the second gate, ‘is it necessary?’ At the third gate, ‘is it kind?’” 

An additional question from Hindu teacher Sathya Sai Baba challenges me: “Does it improve the silence?” My own faith tradition echoes from Ecclesiastes: “There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak.” Now, if we can only draw upon the wisdom to know the difference.

At the Opera

In high school, a date took me to Kleinhan’s Music Hall in Buffalo for the opera. I cannot remember what we saw, only that the highlight of the evening was the hot fudge sundae on the way home. That night, I discovered that opera was definitely not in the top three of my favorite music genres. 

Yet the idea of telling a story fully through song is powerful. Washington Post opera critic Anne Midgette suggests that unlike the stereotype of opera as the fat lady in the Viking Helmet, opera has historically been “a thrilling, contemporary, immersive stage presentation that’s a union of story, text music, image and movement, and that gets under the skin and into the blood of a wide audience that feels it speaks profoundly to them.”.

If Midgette is right in her description, then Larry and I went to the opera this weekend, as did the majority of my Facebook friends. As one friend commented, “I scrolled through Facebook tonight and realized some people didn’t watch “Hamilton.” I don’t know what to do with that.” Since 2015, it’s been nearly impossible to get a ticket for the Broadway production, but thanks to Disney+, “Hamilton” came to our own living room – and we loved it. This week’s hot topic at the waterer cooler would have been “Hamilton” if only we weren’t avoiding the water cooler like the corona plague. 

With the closure of the cinemas and the darkened lights on Broadway, Americans are thirsty for theater, a thirst not satisfied by re-runs of Property Brothers (sorry, Jonathan and Drew). Whether we call it an opera, a musical, or simply an amazing experience of theater at its finest, Lin-Manuel Miranda has allowed us to drink deeply of the magic of “Hamilton.” Originally scheduled to be shown in movie theaters in October 2021, Disney+ decided to release it early, a gift of sorts to American audiences staggered by the dual viruses of corona and racism. Thanks, Walt.

Of course, the show – and film – has its critics. Some take issue with Lin-Manuel’s voice, perhaps forgetting that any man who can write lyrics and music with the skill and emotion he did is surely welcome to sing anytime he wants, even if he’s tone-deaf, which he’s not.  

Others express concern with the glorification of founding fathers who were slaveowners, and the failure of the show to address the question of slavery in a more comprehensive way. Perhaps if Miranda had been writing the script in the summer of 2020, it would be different, but “Hamilton” was birthed more than a decade earlier. Miranda creatively covered a lot of ground in the show, and the challenge of a 2.5 hour screenplay doesn’t allow every facet of a story to be explored. Hamilton II?

Yet as Roxanne Gay noted, [Hamilton] is not “some vulnerable upstart. The show can handle critical engagement and the performances and book and music will still be absolutely incredible.” That critical engagement is already happening, and will continue in the weeks ahead. Chec out Miranda’s Twitter threads.

History, whether form the late 1700s or the last seventeen days, is as much story as fact, influenced by the perspective of both the storyteller and the listeners. A good history presentation, whether seventh grade American history or a Broadway show, leaves the student with as many questions as answers. 

That is my hope with “Hamilton.” As we watch it and re-watch it, belt out its songs in the shower or on the street corner, and imagine what it would be like to be in “the room where it happened,” we can also use this magnificent work of art to invite dialogue about wealth and poverty, about principles and compromise, and about slavery and privilege. We do see the glaring reality of flawed people, but we can also appreciate the ideals they cherished and the sacrifices they made. 

After working a full day in 2009 on a two-line couplet about George Washington, Miranda tweeted: “Hamilton is slow-going, my friends, but I promise you it will be worth it.” Thanks, Lin-Manuel, for keeping your promise. You did not throw away your shot.

Flawed Yet Faithful First Ladies

Mary Jordan, a journalist with the Washington Post, has recently released a biography entitled, “The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.” Mrs. Trump is quoted as saying this in 2016: “Not a lot of people know me,” which still seems to be the case, even after her 3½ years as FLOTUS. But she is not the first female inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to struggle to develop her role, often in lives tinged with tragedy. 

As a young girl, I was fascinated with the first families of our country, especially with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, the beautiful wife of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Until I looked up her biography, I hadn’t realized that she was only thirty-one when she and Jack moved into the White House, bringing with them the three-year-old Caroline and the two-month old “John-John.” I can remember the news of her second son’s birth in August of 1963, and how the nation grieved with the young family when the premature infant died two days later. Our collective grief was far deeper when the dashing president was assassinated on November 22, 1963, and we watched in days of non-stop television coverage as the weary widow, heavily veiled, bid a sorrowful farewell to her husband. 

For Jane Pierce, the death of her last surviving son Benny in a train derailment shortly after her husband was elected president was devastating, and she never recovered. Mary Todd Lincoln struggled as well, saying, “What a world of anguish this is and how I’ve been made to suffer.” Her son’s death in 1862 took a huge toll on her, and according to the White House website, the assassination of her husband “shattered” Mrs. Lincoln.

Ida Saxton McKinley, from Canton, Ohio, also experienced the assassination of her husband, but even before his death, her life had been suffused with tragedy. Both of their daughters died in childhood, and Ida had epilepsy, euphemistically referred to as fainting spells. 

Frances Cleveland faced the challenge of youth, only twenty-one when she married the president in 1885 and moved into the White House. In her later, post-White House life, she was against women’s suffrage, infamously saying: “women weren’t yet intelligent enough to vote.” 

In our attempt to sort through the facts of the complicated racial history of our country, we note that a number of presidential wives personally owned slaves, as many were wealthy in their own right, often having inherited enslaved people. Martha Washington brought nearly one thousand dower slaves to her marriage with the man who would become our first president. Especially troublesome was the experience of Julia Grant. General Ulysses S. Grant led the Union Army during the Civil War, and later became president, yet during that same war, Mrs. Grant either owned or had the use of her father’s enslaved people. Yet others, like Ida McKinley, were staunch abolitionists. 

Think too of the words of Michelle Obama at the 2016 Democratic convention, “That is the story of this country. The story that has brought me to the stage tonight. The story of generations of people who felt the lash of bondage, the shame of servitude, the sting of segregation, who kept on striving, and hoping, and doing what needed to be done. So that today, I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.”

In 2020, the role of “first lady,” or “first spouse,”(I can only hope) remains a strange one, most similar to the traditional role of a minister’s wife. Unpaid, yet with expectations to be fulfilled, it truly is life in the unforgiving fishbowl of public opinion. Yet still, few have taken the advice of Bess Truman: “A Woman’s place in public is to sit beside her husband, be silent and be sure that her hat is on straight.” 

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter explains the alternative: “Do what you can to show you care about other people, and you will make our world a better place.” This Independence Day weekend, I’m saluting these flawed yet faithful women who sacrificed their own well-being, bravely looked tragedy in the eye, and made our world a better place. 

The Graceful Exit

Writing in “The Marvelous Land of Oz,” L. Frank Baum said, “Everything has to come to an end, sometime.” This year, the ‘sometime’ has all too often been sooner rather than later. The Ashland University women’s basketball season ended on the brink of an undefeated year, the 2019-20 school year bit the dust in March, and the Tribe didn’t even make it out of spring training. How I miss “Tito” and Indians baseball. Will we possibly hear the crack of the bat and the iconic “play ball” at the corner of Carnegie and West 9^thStreet before the summer of 2020 ends? Hope springs eternal.

We live in a world filled with endings of all kinds. To the dismay of many Ashlanders, Belly Busters closed their doors this week. I remember their first Ashland location, in the tiny building on Main Street just around the corner from our Walnut Street house. Could an authentic BBQ restaurant find a home in Ashland, Ohio? After twelve years of delicious food, thousands of Facebook fans, and their huge hearts (400+ Thanksgiving dinners in 2019), the answer was “yes.” Linda and Will Anderson attempted to sell the restaurant last year without success, and the COVID-19 restrictions gave a final nudge to their decision to close. As Linda and Will grudgingly admit, “we are getting older.” Ashland will definitely miss their “all you can eat” Friday fish fry, ribs, pulled pork, and – my favorite – Linda’s German chocolate cake.

Their decision came just weeks after Bella Bleu’s announced they were not going to reopen for business. Rita Edwards had created wonderful food off the beaten track in an idyllic space at the water’s edge in Ashland. But like many other small business owners across the county and the country, there wasn’t enough of a cushion to sustain operations through the corona-tinged spring of 2020. 

An ending of retirement has come as well for former Ashland resident Rev. Janet Chilcote, who pastored Paradise Hill United Methodist Church for a number of years while her husband taught at Ashland Theological Seminary. In a tribute to his wife, Paul writes: “I simply want to say that Janet ‘gets it.’ Her life has always been characterized by selfless, humble love, every day that I’ve had the honor to be her partner in life. She taught me very early the art of the ‘win-win’ and has always sought reconciliation and peace in every difficult situation she has ever encountered.” This may be the ending of full-time ministry for Janet, but her selfless, humble love as seen in the roots of ACCESS, and her ministry at Hospice and Paradise Hill, will bear fruit in Ashland county and around the world for years to come. 

Baum stated the obvious when he wrote of the necessity of endings, but their inevitability doesn’t take away the sting of loss. As spectators at a stadium or arena, occasional patrons at a restaurant, or parishioners in the pew, we may experience a pinch of sadness, but we will soon transfer our loyalty to other athletes, restaurants, and pastors. Yet the loss felt by those fully invested in the teams, the businesses and the pastorates runs deeper, and we lament with them in their sorrow and disappointment.

In these days, when loss struggles to find a rhythm in the shadow of pandemic, Ellen Goodman’s advice brings encouragement . “There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over – and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving up, rather than out.” 

One of the losses to Pandemic 2020 was Ashland’s BalloonFest. Yet symbolic of Goodman’s “sense of future,” we may just be able to catch a glimpse of color soaring overhead if we look to the sky tonight and Sunday morning. Somewhere, you see, over the rainbow, dreams that we dare to dream, even if reimagined a dozen times, really do come true. 

To See Snow

Searching for financial records from 2018 in the dungeon, the descriptive name given to a storage room at The Salvation Army in Canton, I came across a stack of 3x5 cards, carefully printed on both sides and each containing a brief snapshot of a life in crisis. In 1991, as Ronald was traveling from Boston to Denver as a stow-away, he was removed from the train in Canton. The next year, Henry was heading to the Carolinas in search of a good job. The next card noted that government agents were after Tim, and his erratic behavior required a referral for a mental health assessment. 

Nineteen year old Brandy was kicked out of her parents’ home and had nowhere to go. When asked his source of income, John indicated he sold his plasma. Darla, her husband, and five kids were traveling: no job, no money, no home. Jerry simply wanted to go home.

Some of the case notes had a touch of humor. Richard, from Kentucky, was heading to Erie, Pennsylvania because he heard it was a good welfare state. Tammy got stranded when she came to Canton to visit her boyfriend at the circus. And although not in this stack of cards, my favorite is recorded in my memory. Asked why he came to Canton from Florida without any plan to support himself, Jim answered, “I wanted to see snow.”

Along with the 3x5 cards used for transient clients, boxes and boxes of case files document the presenting needs of people who requested help with rent, utilities, clothing or food. Some paperwork dated back to the years we served at this very same Salvation Army center beginning in 1995. By policy, records more than seven years old can be destroyed, but like the boxes on the storage shelves in my basement and the dust bunnies under our beds, “out of sight, out of mind.” 

Sorting through a few boxes, I began recycling the file folders and shredding stacks of forms with self-identifying information. As I worked, my mind wandered. What a treasure trove these files could be to the anthropologist or sociologist who wanted to study human societies and cultures or even the scope of social problems and poverty. Contrary to popular assumption, very few of the case files showed “frequent fliers.” I’ve heard countless attacks on those who live in poverty, the stereotypical “welfare queens” who make a science out of milking the system. While I didn’t do any statistical analysis, the large majority of files had one, or maybe two notations. One month’s utility bill paid in2009, and then a month’s rent payment in 2013 when the car needed an $800 repair. 

That evening, my researcher brain started down the rabbit hole of the internet to gather information about poverty. One telling report is that less than a quarter of families in poverty actually receive cash assistance in the form of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and the monthly “welfare check” for a family of three is less than five hundred dollars. Kermit the Frog sings, “it’s not easy being green.” A modified refrain echoes :“It’s not easy being poor.”

Yet beyond the questions of both policy and statistical analysis, I’m drawn to the people and their stories. Did Ronald ever get to Denver? Did Jim open his mouth wide and let the first snowflakes melt on his tongue? Did it work out under the big top for Tammy and her circus boyfriend? Did Jerry ever get home? Where are these people today? Did the modest financial intervention or the gift of a listening ear or a guiding hand make a difference? 

As I washed my hands one more time at the end of a dusty day, my thoughts turned to those waiting to fill out a new generation of poverty-inspired paperwork, to plead their own stories of scarcity. As churches, social service practitioners, and government agencies, and yes, as neighbors and family, can we gently meet the cares of our brothers and sisters with grace and generosity? In these corona-tinged days, will their concerns be met with kindness, their dreams lifted up? These are the stories still to be written in 2020. 

The View from My Window

With a week off from my part-time job, I dusted off a book project and buckled down to write. If I was looking for an excuse to get distracted, the birdfeeder outside the picture window provided the perfect drama, often drawing my attention to the variety of creatures that visited.

Quite a few feathered friends have swooped by for breakfast or lunch. No ornithologist credentials here, but I’ve seen a few robins, some sparrows, and the flash of red from a cardinal. 

Our birdfeeder has also attracted other visitors. Alvin, Simon and Theodore have scampered up the pole and managed to fill their chubby cheeks with birdseed, before scooting off into their hiding places in our front yard. Chipmunks sure are cute little critters. 

And then there are the squirrels. The three elderly trees in our front yard provide the perfect setting for the rodents to engage in a frenzied game of climb, hide and seek. Soon after Larry fills the birdfeeder, the squirrels converge. Often, one climbs the pole and scatters abundant birdseed for his playmates waiting below. Another one likes to sit atop the birdfeeder, a king-of-the-hill, or perhaps queen. I’m not sure which squirrels are girls and which are boys, and I don’t want to get close enough to figure it out. 

I’ve been surprised at how strongly I feel about the squirrels and the birdfeeder. I’m more lenient with the chipmunks, but I do not want the squirrels to take over where they don’t belong. I’ve started knocking on the window to chase them away, and sometimes even go out the door to scare them off. I’ve googled “keeping squirrels out of the birdfeeder,” and Larry has even sprayed the pole with WD-40, but it hasn’t helped. Posting a sign “birds only” isn’t a viable option either. I can’t blame the squirrels for feeding themselves when there are easy pickin’s. 

What’s ironic is that the animals aren’t having issues with each other. The squirrels don’t knock down the chipmunks, and the birds don’t assert their proprietary rights to the birdhouse by attacking the squirrels. They’re sharing the bounty of the seed while this human is sputtering about who should be allowed to eat. 

Without consciously realizing it, I’ve developed a hierarchy of worth for the animals that dwell in our yard. As a result, I’m hearing Bulda, the mama troll from the movie Frozen asking Anna about her hesitancy to marry Kristof. “What’s the issue, dear?” Do I have something against squirrels? I’ve never been bitten by a squirrel, but we did have a squirrel take up residence in our attic a few years ago, and it cost us a bunch of money to tighten up the house to avoid future freeloaders. Chipmunks are definitely cuter, and I do love the way they sing, “All I want for Christmas.” And birds – my concern for them doesn’t make sense – I watched Hitchcock’s The Birdsas a teen and, as our birthday girl Lizzie (five!!!) says, I was ‘fweaked out” for days. Perhaps I’m channeling the words of Jesus: “Consider the birds of the air.” Glad he didn’t say squirrels!

Am I reacting so strongly because it’s called a birdfeeder? The world should function in a right and proper way, and therefore birds should have first dibs on the seed, not squirrels. Because that preconception informs my worldview, how do I accommodate what I am seeing if it challenges my way of being in the world?

Years ago, I demanded of my counselor, “Just tell me what to do to fix this (thinking ‘them’ rather than me) and I’ll do it.” He wisely refused, showing me that sitting with the questions and becoming familiar with the roots of discomfort allows truth, courage and humility to lead to transformative change.

This week, there’s no specific “and the moral of the story is . . .” Instead, some gentle counsel. Take Jed Clampett’s advice to “Set a spell. Take your shoes off.” Push ‘play’ on Ecclesiastes 3 with the Byrds’ anthem by Pete Seeger: “There is a season (turn, turn, turn), and a time to every purpose, under heaven.” See what stirs in you. And breathe deeply. 

Deep in my heart . . . .

Traditional Hasidic wisdom tells us: “Rake the muck this way. Rake the muck that way. It will still be muck. In the time you are brooding, you could be stringing pearls for the delight of heaven.” I’ve been brooding, yes, but I’ve also gathered pearls of image and word to string together this week.

On Tuesday, former Vice President Joe Biden told a story from November 22, 1963, when little Yolanda King came home from school in Atlanta. Jumping in her father’s arms, she said, “Oh, Daddy. Now we will never get our freedom.” Biden told of her father’s response, reassuring, strong, and brave. “Now don’t you worry, baby,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. “It’s going to be all right.” We shall overcome . . .

When King himself was assassinated five years later, presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy faced a serious choice. Kennedy was urged not to go to the planned rally site in the poor, mostly black section of Indianapolis, and had every right to surround himself with bodyguards, hunkerrd down in his own remembered grief. Instead, deciding to address the crowd, he painfully broke the news of Dr. King’s death. As Michael Rosenwald later described, “Kennedy, wearing his brother’s overcoat and speaking without notes, quoted the Greek playwright Aeschylus. ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart . . .’” Following Kennedy’s words, “the threat of violence subsided. Everyone went home.” Across the nation that night, cities burned. Not Indianapolis. 

A year later, at a time when many community pools were still segregated, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to join him in a kiddie pool to cool off his feet, to take a break from his work as a neighborhood police officer. In that iconic image, Fred Rogers and François Clemons sit side by side, a white man and a black man in the water of shared baptism. As the scene concluded, Fred Rogers took a towel and dried Officer Clemmons’ feet. 

In 1992, having learned a new song for his day care center’s Black History Month program, our tow-headed three-year-old stood in the mall’s food court and belted out: “We shall obercome.” O yes, Dan, even in these days, I still string that pearl of memory and hope: “Deep in my heart . . .” 

Another Dan was in Dallas in November 1963. Later, he filled the news anchor seat at CBS Evening News for twenty-four years. Now at eighty-eight, elder statesman Dan Rather continues to lift his voice. In response to his own question of what gives him hope, he concludes his thoughts with this: “And I see millions of my fellow Americans saying give me a hammer, give me a bandage, give me a ballot, let’s go out there and get to work.” Sing on, Pete Seeger – we’ve still got a hammer, bell and song.

Columnist Connie Schultz has created an on-line community I visit each day. In these difficult times, she faithfully posts a daily photo, often of her grandchildren or canine companions Franklin and Walter, with the reminder to pause and to breathe. A community member asked how she can remain positive, and her answer handed me the final addition to my strand of pearls. “I’ve tried to be open about the times when I, too, struggle to remain hopeful. I cry sometimes, and at times I am so angry that, to paraphrase a long ago friend, I run out of walk before I run out of rage. I rest a bit, and keep walking.” Schultz continued: “I am a hopeful person by nature, and most of the time I can count on optimism winning out, even during some of the hardest times in my life. This is such a challenge, but I grasp onto joy wherever I can find it. That is what is keeping me going.”

The strength of a father’s arms. The prophetic mantle of a brother’s coat. The cleansing water of a child’s pool. The promise of a three-year-old’s song. A hammer, a bandage, a ballot; a bell and song too. The reminder to breathe. Glimpses of joy. These are the hope-burnished pearls I’m gratefully stringing to wear in June 2020.