In Troubled Times: Numbing Out

personby Deborah J. Ross
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I first posted this on December 12, 2016, right after the presidential election. I’m putting it up again as a reminder of how important it is to take care of our mental well-being in troubled times.

I have long understood the dangers and seductions of overwork. I’ve frequently coped with stress by balancing my checkbook or going over budget figures. Or reading and replying to every single email in my Inbox. It needn’t be intellectual work: scrubbing bathrooms or reorganizing closets works just fine. All these things involve attention to detail and (to one degree or another) restoring a sense of order to an otherwise capricious and chaotic world. I come by it honestly; when I was growing up, I saw my parents, my father in particular, plunge into work in response to the enormous problems our family faced. He and I are by no means unique. We live in a culture that values work above personal life and outward productivity over inner sensitivity.

“Work” doesn’t have to result in a measurable output. Anything that demands attention (preferably to the exclusion of all else) will do. Reading news stories or following social media accomplish the same objective and have the same result: they put our emotions “on hold.”

As I’ve struggled to detach from the waves of upsetting news, I have noticed an increased tendency in myself to overwork. It occurs to me that I reach for those activities in a very similar way other folks might reach for a glass of liquor or a pack of cigarettes (or things less legal). Or exercising to exhaustion, or any of the many things we do to excess that keep us from feeling. There’s a huge difference between the need to take a  breather from things that distress us and using substances or activities in a chronic, ongoing fashion to dampen our emotional reactions. The problem is that when we do these things, we shut off not only the uncomfortable feelings (upset, fear, etc.) but other feelings as well.

The challenge then becomes how to balance the human desire for “time-out” from the uncertainties and fears of the last few weeks and not numbing out. In my own experience, the process of balancing begins with awareness of what tempts me, whether I indulge in it or not. Is it something that can be good or bad, depending on whether I do it to excess? (Exercise, for example.) Or something best avoided entirely? (Some forms of risk-taking behavior, like unprotected sex with strangers.) If it can be both a strength and a weakness, how do I tell when enough is enough, or what a healthy way to do this is? Continue reading “In Troubled Times: Numbing Out”…

Such a week…

personby Gillian Polack
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Part of the annual report into antisemitism in Australia was released last week. Also last week (just before I left Melbourne to come home, in fact) a synagogue was firebombed. Thankfully there were no casualties in the attack. But..

I am now facing the deluge of comments one gets after the news was released. So many of those talking about the attack believe it is by “Zionist Jews.” I want to stand up and shout that every single one of these people is a bigot. They’re using the fourth definition to “Zionist” to replace most of the poison inherent in the words they’re using to replace “Zionist”, such as “Jews.” This definition reflects the emotion and hate in the mind of the user. It does not reflect Australian Jews at all. Take my siblings: some support Israel, some don’t, some are quiet on the subject because they believe it’s not anyone else’s business. And one of us (not me) is Ultra-Orthodox and has links to the burned synagogue. None of us have any wish to burn down any synagogue, much less one filled people books we love and people who know members of our family.

I saw walls of Talmud charred to black and it reminded me of the times when (in Europe) supersession saw Jews expelled from their homeland of hundreds (possibly up to 1400) years, and in other places saw cartloads and cartloads and cartloads and cartloads of Talmuds burned. Those burnings were to make certain that Jewish culture and religion was frozen at the time of Jesus, because that was the only relationship with Jews that these particular Christians could handle. Note I said “these particular Christians.” Most contemporary Christians and contemporary Muslims do not condone barbaric acts. They are not the people crying that all Jews need to be deported from Australia, to make way for a return of the old White Australia.

The ‘old White Australia’ is a fiction. “White Australia” is complex but has very little in common with what those shouting think. I want to sit down and teach them some history. Literally, in terms of people, before Europeans came it was not White at all, and when the First Fleet arrived… there were Jewish convicts on it. The members of the public shouting about Australian Jews not being White and not being wanted here has returned, but I’m still told I have White privilege. Most of those telling me I have White privilege and should be deported came from families who arrived here after my own. And the shouts are louder right now.

I can give you the old and new definitions of Zionism if definitions can help you deal. I can also give you a photograph. The photograph is more, fun, so I’ll only give you the definitions if you want them (just ask!).

Why the photograph? The Myer Christmas windows are a feature of the Melbourne landscape at this time of year. This year, the pro-Palestinians marchers (some of them are the same people who want me deported and blame Jews for everything that hurts) protested against them. We all looked for reasons. Maybe it was because Myer was founded by someone Jewish… except Sidney Myer converted to Christianity. Maybe they hate all people who have Jewish ancestry? That’s the purity of blood notion, used to hurt those who could not shake off their Jewishness enough in Early Modern Spain and Spanish territories. If you’re not familiar with this long moment in the history of the Spains, look up ‘Torquemada.’  Jewish ownership of business? Myer is not owned by Jews. This means that either the Christmas windows themselves are deeply offensive (and aimed at children, therefore problematic) or those protesting them are idiots. I’ll let you decide:

 

The Irwins looking at parrots in the Australian Outback, Myer windows 2024
Melbourne, December 2024

Predicting the Future?

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Over twenty years ago I wrote a story about a young man who gets arrested on a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras because a blood test shows he has XX chromosomes even though he appears to be male. The Louisiana of that story’s time – which was more or less right now – had passed a law making it a crime to present yourself as anything but your “natural” gender.

He ends up in a jail cell with drag queens, a lesbian wearing male clothes, a trans person who is taking steps toward transition, and a woman not unlike himself – someone born with all the appearance of a woman, but with XY chromosomes.

I told it from his – very clueless, in the beginning – point of view because I wanted the story to be about someone who had never even considered the possibility that he was anything other than a cis man being forced to confront the situation.

It was a great story, but I was never able to sell it. I’ve looked at it over the years and seen a couple of things I’d change as I’ve increased my understanding of these matters, but it’s still a good story.

It’s just too late to publish it, at least as science fiction. It’s basically real life now. It’s obvious that many places are going to be punishing people for being trans or even – shades of the past – for dressing in a way that belies your assigned gender.

Maybe I should make the revisions and try it on a non-genre fiction magazine or anthology. Isn’t realistic a hallmark of literary fiction?

I’m not usually someone who writes science fiction that can be seen as predictive, but it was clear to me more than twenty years ago that there were places in the United States that might well pass laws against people for not fitting into prescribed gender roles.

Of course, I wrote it as a warning. That’s why most people write dystopias, after all. However, given the current fetish of the broligarchs for stupid takes on science fiction and fantasy, it’s easy to believe people would have taken it as a good idea.

I don’t want to live in Margaret Atwood’s Gilead or William Gibson’s Jackpot, but apparently a lot of people do. Continue reading “Predicting the Future?”…

Open House Closed for How Long

personby Madeleine Robins
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For a couple of decades (since the early 1990s) we held an annual holiday open house. When we were still living in NYC this started out as a party for my husband’s recording studio–but me being me and Danny being the boss, I did almost all the cooking, made the invitations, etc–and it was left up to the guys at This Way Productions to buy the drinks, make up the invite list, and ferry all the mountains of food down to Soho where the studio was. When Danny and his partners closed down the studio we had gotten into the habit of a holiday party. In 2002, we had our last NYC-based party–and Danny flew out to San Francisco the next day to start his new job, with me and the girls following two weeks later when school let out. A year later, when December rolled around it seemed entirely natural to have the open house again: the Robins-Caccavo Annual Holiday Party became a thing we did. Since Danny and I comprise two very different parts of the creative world (he’s the Sound guy; I’m the Words person) and two different work communities, it was always fun to see those worlds collide. New friendships form. Vast quantities of food disappear.

Every year we’d have about 70 people showing up somewhere between 2pm and 7pm. Spread out through the house and over five hours this was manageable–and permitted me to deal with my social anxiety by scurrying around refilling bowls and checking ice levels when I couldn’t handle small talk for a few minutes. Those five hours meant a week of planning, buying, and cooking. We might have just ordered pizza, but where would be the fun in that? Every year I made a turkey, a ham, an immense pot of chili (and latterly, a somewhat smaller pot of vegetarian chili). Plus cookies, sweet breads, and occasionally a birthday cake (for myself, since my birthday often fell on or around the Sunday of the party). Bread and cheese, bagels and lox, chips and salsa… I did all this cooking mostly in the evenings, around child-care and work responsibilities. I look back it all now in awe, particularly since the party was usually 1-2 weeks after Thanksgiving, and 2-3 weeks before Christmas: the season of kitchen time. Still, there was something wonderful about seeing this vast mix of people we liked getting to know each other. And no one left hungry.

At the end of the day the turkey carcass went in a pot for stock; the ham bone in the freezer to be deployed later for pea soup. I would then wind up with my feet up while Danny bundled up the leftovers and did the lion’s share of the cleaning. I married a very good man. And round about November of the next year people would start asking “are you going to have your party again this year?” And the answer, until 2020, was always “of course.”

Covid changed a lot of things. We haven’t had a party since 2019 (oh, those days of innocence). Would we like to do it again? Yes. But I’m not sure how many people want to attend closely packed social events with people they don’t know well (I mean, I am pretty certain that everyone on our guest list would be fully vaccinated and smart enough to stay home if they were sick, but can I promise that?). We could invite fewer people, but part of the joy, to me, was inviting everyone we knew and seeing them interact. It’s the social scientist in me.

Then there’s the… well, to be frank, the age thing. I consider throwing the party and part of me notes, in the immortal words of Danny Glover, that I might be “too old for this shit.” I’m pretty active, and I take joy in getting things done, but… turkey, ham, chili, baking, cleaning, organizing… It’s a lot. Do I actually want to be doing all that?

At the moment the answer is still yes.

And some things might even make it better. For one thing, we now have a relatively huge back yard that is civilized and attractive, where people who are not comfortable gathering inside the house could hang out. This might mean it’s a better idea to have the party in July than in December–summer in San Francisco can be chilly and foggy, but it’s less of a gamble than relying on a December day to be sunny and not prohibitively cold.

The window for this year’s party has closed (you can’t just gin something like this up in a week). But maybe next year we can try again. Maybe I’d better start planning now.

Melbourne

personby Gillian Polack
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Right now, I’m dreaming of my childhood. At an unholy hour tomorrow morning (6 hours from now, in fact) I will take a bus to Melbourne and … that’s where I will be on Monday, when you read this. I could finish packing, or I could tell you all about my childhood. I choose to finish packing. This is because my mother will give me a Look if I appear without clothes.

Why have I not finished everything at this hour on this day? Because I was very silly and fell over and damaged myself. Not badly, but sufficiently so that everything has been slow this week.

What will I be doing right now, on Monday US time? Some research at the State Library of Victoria. I have a list of books and every one I read is a tremendous help. Dinner will be with a group of old school friends I’ve not seen in forever.  Melbourne is the most European of Australian cities and I have the tough choice of eating well or eating very well. I will pack very loose clothes. My excuse will be that it’s summer.

Now you know where I’ll be and what I’m doing… I’d better go prepare.

Learning to Look at Nature

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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A sketch of a crow sitting in the sun on the street.I took up drawing this year. I’m still very much a beginner, but I am getting much better at really looking at something and seeing it at the level necessary to draw it.

One of the things I do is take pictures of things I think would be interesting to draw, so the sketch accompanying this post was made from a photo I took of a crow standing in the street on a sunny day.

My sweetheart and I feed the neighborhood crows, so I’m always looking at them. And, as with drawing, I find that the more I look, the more details I discover.

Years back my sweetheart started carrying some cat kibble in a small pouch so he could try to make friends with the crows. However, this was a hit-or-miss system and it didn’t really take off until during the pandemic, when he joined me on my regular walks around the block. The crows took note of us because the pattern was more regular.

After awhile, I had to start carrying treats, too, because they associated me with my sweetheart. They come to our bedroom window most mornings. We now feed crows within a four-or-five-block radius of our place.

Today, though, when we went for a short walk, none of our crows were nearby. However, there were large numbers of them in the sky, all flying the same general direction.

I’m pretty sure there’s a big crow meet-up somewhere downtown. I know crows have meetings from time to time. Sometimes they have them in a big tree in our neighborhood, but whatever they were doing today involved more crows than that.

Crow business. I’d really like to know more about crow business, but I don’t speak Crow, more’s the pity. Continue reading “Learning to Look at Nature”…

In Troubled Times: Facing the Problem Squarely

personby Deborah J. Ross
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Back in 2016, I posted a series of blogs entitled In Troubled Times. Today it seems fitting to remind myself that I survived then and will survive now. These thoughts are from Monday, December 5, 2016.

A few days ago, John Scalzi wrote in his blog, Whatever, “…the Trump administration and its enablers are going to make a mad gallop out of the gate to do a whole bunch of awful things, to overwhelm you with sheer volume right at the outset.”

Pretty shocking statement, huh? That was my first reaction. My second was that Scalzi is very likely correct. All the signs are there…all the signs that in my panic-stricken moments, I want to ignore so hard they go away.

My next reaction was to surrender my mind to a gazillion chattering monkeys, each with her own idea of What Must Be Done Right Now. I can work myself into a downright tizzy in no time this way. Not only that, I can paralyze myself with too many alternatives and no way to prioritize them, jumbling actions I might take with those that are impossible or unsafe (crazy-making) for me.

Any of this sound familiar?

It’s all based on a false choice. I don’t have to either prepare now for the logically impending “awful things” or play ostrich on the river in Egypt. But in order to see other, saner alternatives, I must first evict the Monkeys of Panic so I can regard the situation calmly.

We’re in for some hard times, and knowing that is a relief.

At first, it seems counter-intuitive to say that acknowledging we are in for some dark times comes as a relief. The relief is because instead of nebulous fears running rampant, bursting into exaggeration and melodrama at every turn, vulnerable to any sort of fact-free hype, I’ve stepped away from the emotional storm. I’m facing the problem squarely, as my tai chi teacher used to say. We’re in for some tough times, and likely there will be a whole slew of bad news in the early months of 2017.

When I’m no longer trying to deny or distort the way things are (for example, Trump’s cabinet choices and what is known about them, or what he has said he will or won’t do) I not only become calmer, but better able to see things I might do, alone or in solidarity with like-minded folks.

This is based on a simple truth that in order to act effectively, I need to be sane. I can’t be sane if I’m bouncing off the walls at every headline on social media. I could, of course, disengage entirely from social media and refuse to read or listen to any sort of news. But I don’t want to do that. I want to stay engaged, but in a mindful way. I want to know what I’m up against. Once I stop fighting the reality of what that is, I free myself to use my energy and time in productive ways. I don’t know exactly what form these tough times will take, but I don’t need to prepare for every twist and turn. I can trust my ability to respond appropriately and creatively.

 

Some Days

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m writing this late on my Monday evening because I was so worried about what was happening in my hometown. Not where I live now (Canberra) but where my family has lived since 1858. Outside a synagogue not at all far from my own childhood one, and half a suburb away from where my mother lives, there was going to be a pro-Palestine demonstration. Given what happened in Montreal over the weekend, I did not like this at all. Given what happened a few minutes away last year, during a Friday service on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, where my mother’s first cousin was one of the people ‘evacuated’ into a violent anti-Jewish crowd… I was very worried.

I’ve just seen the video clips of what transpired and Australia can sometimes be quite uniquely itself. Before I saw the video clips, however, I realised the angry crowd might be a bit smaller than last time. This notice was circulated on the interwebz shortly before the event:

Protesters still came. They were thoroughly covered, except for their eyes, and while this might have been sensible to hide their identities, it wasn’t such a good idea. Melbourne was not as hot as Canberra today, but Canberra was in the thirties… so these poor blokes must have been seriously uncomfortable.

I saw a bunch of clips of what happened after they arrived and there was no violence. Two of the pro-Palestine protesters were gently ushered into a police van and I’m pretty sure I heard someone say “Have a good day.” The angry violent Jews shouted “Go home. Leave us alone” in unison. well away from where the protesters stood.  I interpreted this (since I come from that community, I trust my interpretation) as “You’ve driven half an hour or an hour to be a pain, now just turn around and drive back, please.” They waved Israeli flags and Australian flags. They sang Hatikvah (mostly off-key) and several of them used the great Australian salute to the group of protesters.

No-one was hurt. Everyone got their point across, including the police. The worst loss was to the dignity of those who were scared of the young woman who led the “Go home” shout.

I wish more protests were like this.

Living in Margaret Atwood’s Future

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Cover of the first edition of The Handmaid's TaleHistorian Timothy Snyder keeps telling us “Do not obey in advance” even as more and more people appear to be leaping up to kiss the ring (or perhaps a part of the anatomy) of the grifter now apparently headed back to the White House in the ultimate triumph of the January 6 insurrection.

This week in his newsletter he is looking at Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in a three-part series. The third should be available the same day this post appears; the first is here and the second here.

In the first part, he critiques The New York Times’s summary of the book on its current trade paper bestseller list (where, I am glad to note, the book, which first came out forty years ago, has appeared for 139 weeks). The Times’s 16-word summary reads: “In the Republic of Gilead’s dystopian future, men and women perform the services assigned to them.”

His whole piece is worth reading, but he sums it up here:

Christian Reconstructionism is now at the edge of power in the United States, and the attitude of the relevant people towards the female body and indeed towards rape is an essential element of what is happening and what is likely to happen.  Both-sidesism, prudery, and euphemisms are keeping much of the media from bringing this story together in time.  We will need clear language in general, and this novel in particular, to see the whole picture.  I will develop this in two posts to come.

In the second essay, he makes this point:

The Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale is not a purely invented world based on the law and culture of one religion or another.  It is a well-drawn post-America.

Prof. Snyder thinks this book is important to understanding where we are today and I certainly don’t disagree, though perhaps the most disturbing thing about what an accurate picture it paints of where we are is that the country did not take appropriate steps to head it off.

We can all argue about what those steps should have been, but I’ll leave that to others. I’m tired of dishing out blame. I’m more interested in fixes.

Alas, The Handmaid’s Tale, while an excellent description of one of the places we could be headed (the others being a utopia for certain tech bros and no one else or just the grifter’s unparalleled corruption accompanied by significant foreign influence) is not the best book for fixes. Continue reading “Living in Margaret Atwood’s Future”…

A Small Responsibility

personby Madeleine Robins
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Watch any medical drama (of which there are many–and I admit I’m a sucker for them) and you will doubtless come upon the one where the next of kin struggles to make a decision for the patient who cannot speak for their/him/herself. Should the patient be resucitated? Given a potentially lifesaving treatment despite their prior expressed disinterest in said treatment? Should the patient be taken off life support? High stakes, high drama.

But sometimes the stakes are high but the drama is a little less so.

About fifteen years ago my aunt made me her medical power of attorney. At that time she was a spry young thing of 85, still traveling with her husband, meeting weekly with her French conversation group, cooking in her beautiful small kitchen, reading voraciously, holding ferocious opinions about the world and politics (she would not have been pleased with the outcome of the most recent election). So when she asked, I said “of course.” My brother and I are her closest living relatives, I live nearer than he does–and it’s my aunt. Of course I would do anything she asked, because I adore her.

In the abstract I knew what the job entailed (after all, I have watched a lot of medical dramas). We had a discussion about what amount of medical interference she wanted should she become incapacitated. And then we went back to talking about all the other things in the world, as we always had done.

In the 15 years since then, her husband died after a long and miserable illness, and without that tether–being the organized one who took care of him and saw that everything–appointments, home-care attendants, bills and arrangements and repairs to their home–was organized, she has drifted into dementia, a little like a boat drifting slowly out to sea. The day-to-day business and organization of her medical care is handled by a trust. My responsibility is to visit, to love her… and when the time comes, to make decisions about just how much care is enough.

Last week, just after the election, I flew down to LA for an emergency visit. My aunt had a sudden cascade of health problems. Chest pains proved to be pneumonia, which was leapt on with the power of modern medicine (which is to say, antibiotics–totally permissible under the letter of the power of attorney). The next day her Nurse Practitioner got results for a blood test which said that my aunt’s potassium was low. The level wasn’t critically low yet, but decreasing potassium can be an end-of-life sign, because significantly low potassium can trigger cardiac arrest. I was told to come down from San Francisco ASAP; it was implied that I might be coming to say goodbye. Continue reading “A Small Responsibility”…