Not a Machine

personby Madeleine Robins
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My body is not a temple. It’s not a wasteland, either, or a castle, or any other locational metaphor I can think of. It’s a body, and frankly I tend to treat it like a machine. I take moderately good care of it–I don’t eat terribly (I’m fortunate that I like almost all healthy foods except liver and hard boiled eggs). I live a modestly active life–I walk a lot. I try to read and stay involved with the world (there’s a heartbreak) and to laugh as much as possible (I am helped in this by an extraordinarily silly family). But all the laughter and eating healthy and spending 45 minutes on the elliptical does not alter the fact that I’m getting older. I’m not trying to stay young–that’s a mug’s game. I’m just trying to optimize what I have.

My father made it to just-shy-of-98. His twin made it to 100. My mother died relatively young, but she had health complications that made it, well, unsurprising. But her sister is 97. Genetics-wise, and barring speeding vehicles, falling pianos, or illnesses I can’t currently anticipate, I may be around for a while, yet. And so I keep using what I have. Of course, what I have is not what I used to have, I forget that sometimes.

Case in point: this weekend my daughter and her husband moved. Discovery of several rooms-worth of black mold made this not just a good idea but an imperative. My husband and I drove up to help, and spent about eight hours packing things, carrying heavy things, and (in his case) driving a truck to and from storage. The move was complicated by the fact that my daughter had hurt her back and couldn’t lift anything (well, she could and did, but every time she did her body informed her that this was a dumb idea). I climbed up and down stairs (and was grateful to have remembered to bring my knee brace). After a few hours of standing in the kitchen packing dishes I had to take off my shoes: my feet hurt. I carried some boxes I probably shouldn’t have. But the work had to get done, and I did my part. But every now and then the thought occurred to me: this used to be a lot easier. A lot easier.

The bill started to come due on the drive home, when my entire body hummed with exhaustion, the knee brace was squishing my leg, and my feet ached no matter whether I had shoes on or off. It took about 36 hours–and two good nights of sleep–to restore me to my usual level of reckless activity. But I am reminded again that, while I tend to treat my body like a machine–oil it, fuel it, make sure it’s running smoothly, surely it’ll run forever–it’s not a machine. (Hell, even a well-tended machine has a useful lifespan, after which it’s–what? a museum display?) My new resolution is not just to hear what my body is telling me, but actually listen. I’m in it for the long game, maybe another 20-30 years, during which time what I have won’t be what I used to have. My goal, in the words of Spencer Tracy in Pat and Mike, is that “what’s there is cherce.”

 

Gillian’s a-cold (again)

personby Gillian Polack
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Today is the day of small things.

I have to get rid of 100 emails from my impossible in-box. I have to visit the dentist. I have to read two books so that I can write 1000 words on them. I have to do six other things that I’ve put off because the last days have been less than merry.

It all has to be finished by close of business.

Why am I being such a Red Queen and running frantically on the sport?

Partly it’s because the financial year ends on 30 June, so everyone in Canberra is running frantically on the spot. It’s one of the interesting side-effects of working in the national capital. Once my friends retire, they lose this deadline fervour. When they’re all retired, this time of year will be a doddle. Right now, however, as someone finishes something, they send me an email and I have to do the follow-up.

Partly it’s because the northern hemisphere is heading for summer and so there are conventions and meetings and other cool things. Someone else’s summer means they want to finish things before they go on holiday. More things get pushed into my in-tray.

I want to hibernate this winter. That’s what particularly cold winters are for. Snuggling in the one place that stays warm, and sleeping until the wind is less icy. Right now, my heaters work overtime to keep my flat’s temperature above 13 (that’s 55.4 for my US readers). Other Australians, strangely cheerful, tell me to put on more clothes, but I am asthmatic and 13 is the trigger point for attacks. If it weren’t for the asthma and my tendency to want to hibernate, this season would be perfect. When I was a child I opened my windows wide and adored the cold night air. Mind you, when I was a child I also wondered why I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. I would get up early and dress and go outside and watch for sky spectacle. This is how I saw the Southern Aurora in suburban Melbourne.

I nearly forgot that the cold in Canberra is due to icy winds. The wind that brings beautifully fresh air up from Antarctica (which is particularly chill at this time of year, for so many meanings of the word ‘chill’) blows across the mountains to us. Snowfall began early this year.

Do not ask what the wind chill factor is (only 3 degrees right now, because right now the air is almost still), or why Australian buildings are more built for heat and cold and can be difficult to keep warm. Just ask yourself, “When will Gillian stop complaining?” I shall stop complaining when I’m all caught up, and when my flat reaches 18 degrees C. Neither of these things is likely to happen this week.

Fixing the Air We Breathe Indoors

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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On May 15, ASHRAE — the association of engineers who work in heating, air conditioning, and ventilation — set out its Proposed Standard 241P, Control of Infectious Aerosols.

They are soliciting comments on it until May 26 from the public. Links and instructions for comments can be found here.

This standard, which was put together over six months — lightning speed for ASHRAE, which often takes years to develop new standards due to its painstaking process — was built on years of work by the organization on indoor air quality and included some input from public health experts.

According to ASHRAE:

The standard will address long-range transmission of infectious aerosols and provides minimum requirements for:

  • Equivalent outdoor air (combined effect of ventilation, filtration, and air cleaning) for use during Infection Risk Mitigation Mode
  • Room air distribution to reduce risk
  • Characterization of filter and air cleaner effectiveness and safety
  • Commissioning, including development and implementation of a Building Readiness Plan
  • System operation in Infection Risk Mitigation Mode during periods of high risk
  • Maintenance tasks and their minimum frequency
  • Residences and health care facilities

ASHRAE issued some recommendations early in the pandemic that provided guidelines for the kind of filtration that should be used in buildings to minimize transmission of airborne viruses. Those guidelines, though very good, were based on ongoing work on indoor air quality and did not include the kind of comprehensive work they brought to this new standard.

These standards, once incorporated into building codes and other regulations for buildings, will be a major step forward in making sure that the indoor air is safe to breathe. In a world in which many people spend most of their time indoors, that is a crucial element of public health.

These standards will minimize the transmission of airborne diseases including, but not limited to, Covid. Continue reading “Fixing the Air We Breathe Indoors”…

Tyrannosaurus Lips and Other Wonders of Science

personby Deborah J. Ross
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Once my science classes progressed beyond “the parts of the cell,” I loved them. So much so that my college degree is in Biology, which entailed many classes in Physics and General and Organic Chemistry. Fast forward many decades, I had the joy to attend Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop, about which I have previously blogged. But I’ve never given up my love of Things Prehistoric. Here are two wonderful new stories:

T. rex had thin lips and a gummy smile, controversial study suggests

 

Theropod dinosaurs — a group of bipedal, mostly meat-eating dinosaurs that included T. rex, Velociraptor and Spinosaurus — may instead have concealed their deadly chompers behind thin lips that kept their teeth hydrated and tough enough to crush bones. 

Paleontologists had already suggested that T. rex may have had lips, and there has been debate whether carnivorous dinosaurs looked more like present-day crocodiles, which don’t have lips and have protruding teeth, or if they more likely resembled monitor lizards, whose large teeth are covered by scaly lips.

Rhino-like ‘thunder beasts’ grew massive in the evolutionary blink of an eye after dinos died off

 

In the aftermath of the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact, a second explosion rocked the animal kingdom. 

This time, it was the mammals that blew up. Rhino-like horse relatives that had lived in the shadow of the dinosaurs became gigantic “thunder beasts” as suddenly as an evolutionary lightning strike,  new research, published Thursday (May 11) in the journal Science(opens in new tab), shows.

“Even though other mammalian groups attained large sizes before [they did], brontotheres were the first animals to consistently reach large sizes,” study first author Oscar Sanisidro(opens in new tab), a researcher with the Global Change Ecology and Evolution Research Group at the University of Alcalá in Spain. “Not only that, they reached maximum weights of 4-5 tons [3.6 to 4.5 metric tons] in just 16 million years, a short period of time from a geological perspective.”

Last year, weird “bramble snout” fossils were documented at the site called “Castle Bank,” but new research published May 1 in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution(opens in new tab) describes the whole fossil deposit.

Hosting a myriad of soft-bodied marine creatures nd their organs, which are scarcely preserved in the fossil record, the site resembles the world-renowned Cambrian deposits of Burgess Shale in Canada and Qingjiang biota in China. The rocks of Castle Bank, however, are 50 million years younger and give researchers a unique window into how soft-bodied life diversified in the Ordovician Period (485.4 million to 443.8 million years ago), according to a statement released by Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales.

Researchers believe they’ve recovered more than 170 species from the site, most of which are new to science. These include what appear to be late examples of Cambrian groups, including the weirdest wonders of evolution, the nozzle-nosed opabiniids, and early examples of animals that evolved later, including barnacles, shrimp and an unidentified six-legged insect-like creature. The rocks are also home to the fossilized digestive systems of trilobites and the eyes and brain of an unidentified arthropod, as well as preserved worms and sponges.

Frost and Games

personby Gillian Polack
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I want to complain about the cold again. When frost comes early, as it has this year, I want to complain until it goes away, which will probably be around August. It’s not that I dislike the cold, it’s that the cold frolics frivolously with my chronic illnesses. I used to go to work early purely to crunch the frost underfoot on my way in. That was my twenties, and this is my sixties and it’s as if I’m two different people.

My new self brings some surprises. Someone was respectful to me today. I kept looking around to see if they were talking to someone else, but there was no-one else there. I could get used to respectful.

The other thing I noticed today is that I didn’t instantly want to write a chapter of novel full of crunchy frost and chill air. I used to love taking the weather and telling it strictly to march alongside a novel, keeping my characters and their life struggles company. I used a very hot summer to bring magic ants into Elizabeth/Lizzie/Liz’s everyday in Ms Cellophane and also to make a memorable Christmas. I needed help to make a memorable Christmas because I’m not that good at Christmas.

I still bring weather into my fiction. I love weather and it’s fun to use it to shape moods. The opening of The Green Children Help Out has London weather. That rain isn’t critical to the story, but it helps me remember that most of the story is set in a wetter country than my own. It’s dry outside, and around zero degrees Celsius. We’ve been given a sheep graziers’ warning (spellcheck wants to change this to “a sheep braziers’ warning” or, alternately, to a “sheep grenadiers’ warning” – Spellcheck is quite obviously not Australian), which is a common weather alert up here in sheep country. Although, to be honest, the town I live in has more kangaroos than sheep.

All national capitals should have more kangaroos than sheep. Washington DC would be far more entertaining with mobs of ‘roos staring at the tourists and politicians and public servants. When a mob stares, every single one of them takes the same pose and only their heads move until you’re past. That’s my experience, anyhow.

One Christmas (since it’s cold it must be Christmas – I get this message from films set in the northern hemisphere) we had a work celebration at the restaurant next to the golf course with its full wall of floor to ceiling windows to bring the green into the dining room. We were all a bit drunk by dusk, because, of course, real Christmas is in midsummer. At dusk (again, of course, this is normal in civilised countries) all the kangaroos and wallabies came down and stared at us through the never-ending windows. One group of ‘roos did the mob stare. Drunk public servants wearing silly Christmas hats stared right back.

The older I get the more daft stories I collect. I tell my favourites over and over again. Sometimes I put them in my novels. My novels are littered with tellable moments.

For a full decade I asked readers to guess which moments in the contemporary novels were the real ones. They never guessed correctly.

I found myself blinking in stupid surprise when a reader told me, very seriously, that the real-life incident in Ms Cellophane was me swimming naked in the Murrumbidgee and getting arrested for it. I was wondering how to explain that I’m not very bold… and that I cannot swim. I blinked even more energetically when someone explained to me very sincerely that the series of events at Parliament House in The Wizardry of Jewish Women was obviously fabricated. I fictionalised it enough so that I wasn’t precisely representing the real people, but the events happened. As I love telling people, it’s just as well I fictionalised, given what happened to one of the people whose character I changed. Although I also love explaining to people that if you’re a politician and get a bit grumpy at lobbyists who want to talk, be very careful that none of them write fiction.

For those of you who haven’t played this game before and would like to guess a real incident from one of my novels, go for it. If you’re right, I’ll send you an unpublished short story so that you get something to read before it enters the big world.

Or you could tell me why I was happy to explain that yes, I once caused a Deputy Prime Minister to fall down a mountain (not at all intentionally, I assure you!) but am glad I rarely see politicians these days, because the original person I based a character on is not someone I really want to be introduced to with the words, “This is that writer who put you in that novel.” Guessing correctly who the politician is will also get you a look at the short story. I’ll give you a hint: you don’t need to know a great deal about Australian politics. You do have to occasionally read the news.

What I do in winter these days then is play mind-games. The first three correct answers this week get a sneak preview of a short story. If you don’t want people to see your answers, you can find me on social media and let me know privately. If anyone plays, then I’ll decide if the short story will contain weather.

An Aikido Approach to Chatbots

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Tools can be useful,
but don’t count on them to think.
Use them mindfully.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that the discussion of guns for self defense all seem to start — and end — with the purchase of said gun. Perhaps a few of those who hold the view that “an armed society is a polite society” (to quote Robert Heinlein) also advocate serious training, but it’s easy to get the impression that too many people think owning the gun is all you need to protect yourself.

I wrote a story about this called “Survival Skills.” In it an Aikido sensei told the protagonist that no tool is ever ultimately the answer. The protagonist had to learn the core truth of that the hard way, though.

I bring this up because all the furor about the AI chat bots has skipped over analyzing them as a tool that has both benefits and flaws. Some people are already using them to replace humans, without paying any attention to some of their significant flaws. (A writing program that makes up facts and cites non-existent articles is not a tool to rely on.)

And the scammers are already out in full force: people are submitting chatbot written stories to magazines. The biggest problem from the magazine POV is not separating them out from real stories — that’s pretty easy — but the fact they flood the inbox, exhausting the editor who has to deal with them.

Nobody’s going to make any money sending chatbot stories to magazines, but someone’s probably making money teaching people how to do that.

My Aikido teacher used to occasionally say, “I teach philosophy,” meaning that Aikido is so much more than a physical practice. I try to apply the principles of Aikido to other aspects of life.

I just applied two Aikido principles to the discussion of chatbots: relying on a tool when you don’t understand what you’re doing with it and acting without integrity. Aikido teaches you to avoid both of those things. Continue reading “An Aikido Approach to Chatbots”…

Meeting Julie Again

personby Madeleine Robins
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My mother (left) and Aunt Julie, sometime in 1953.

I just returned from a flying visit to my Aunt. She is my mother’s sister, and my favorite aunt (my father had five sisters, all fiercely accomplished, but none of them were as flat-out lovable as Julie; I’m not sure that was their goal). The thing about her is that she was also fiercely accomplished: she had an extraordinarily complex job at UCLA for a couple of decades, and oversaw the switch from analog to digital communication and records. She married a marvelous guy, a professor of anatomy who very sensibly thought the sun shone out of her every pore Together they traveled the world and had adventures and made friends–and yet managed to be intensely private and very happy to be by themselves or with the handful of people they loved best. My brother and I were fortunate enough to be on that short list.

Ten years ago my aunt was the sharpest, funniest woman you ever met, able to balance details and organize troops, and make the troops love it. My mother, half-kidding, used to call her “Mrs. Megaphone,” but my aunt rarely raised her voice or got angry. Charm, a sense of humor, and a to-do list and organizational systems made it easy for her to get what she needed to get done, done.

Then my uncle got sick, and for perhaps five years their world got smaller and a smaller, and she became more wrapped up in my uncle as the inevitability of losing him became clearer. After he died she was devastated. She was still perfectly lovely, but broken. She didn’t return phone calls or letters much, she withdrew, and increasingly relied on the assistance of her marvelous housekeeper. And her memory started to fray. It was sort of a perfect storm: her hearing isn’t good, but she never remembers to wear her hearing aids, and when she does she doesn’t wear them long because she’s not used to them, and they annoy her. She used to have an iron organizational grip on the business of their house, but during her husband’s illness she’d put a lot of that aside, and while she expected to go back to it, she just never did. She didn’t want to see many people–family and the occasional friend who wouldn’t take no for an answer. So mental stimulation took a hit. Then COVID struck, and she was necessarily housebound. She is now 97 and unable to live without help–which thank God and all the fish she can afford.

My family went down to visit her over Christmas. My younger daughter lives in the same building as Julie and is sort of my agent in place. My older daughter and my husband hadn’t seen her recently, so they were expecting the Julie of a few years ago–sharp and funny and able to keep up with most of our rat-a-tat badinage. They wanted her to be the Julie of ten years ago. So do I.  Until this visit, when I found myself letting that go.

When my uncle was so sick, I was there to support them both in whatever way I could (as their whole family was). But I have come to realize that in some part of my brain I believed that after he died, and after she’d processed the terrible loss, I’d get my aunt of ten years ago back. And I’d been mourning the fact that that isn’t going to happen–which is not unreasonable, perhaps. But that mourning was getting in the way of my enjoying the aunt that I have. She’s still funny, she’s still immensely lovable, she lights up when the people she loves arrives. We don’t have long conversations anymore–it would be more like a monologue, with her trying to catch up. This trip, for the first time, I just sat there, responding when she said something, talking a little, holding her hand. When my daughter came by we clowned around, which utterly delighted her, which in turn, utterly delights me. Somehow, rather than holding on to the person my aunt was, on this visit I was able to just be with the person she is. And it was swell.

My father made to not-quite 98, and had all his faculties until the last week or so when he was actively dying. I’d like to live as long and stay as sharp as he did. But nothing is guaranteed. If I live that long but am not as sharp, I’d like to be like my aunt, full of love and joy, and grateful for the people around her who love her.

 

Ice and Snow

personby Gillian Polack
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It’s zero degrees outside right now, and autumn. Translated for the US, that’s 32 degrees and Fall. This is one of the times of year that confuses our friends in the northern hemisphere. I know this because the number of times a day every single May that I’m told that the weather is warming up is ridiculously high.

Once upon a time only my US and Canadian friends forgot the southern hemisphere had different seasons, but these days it’s parts of Europe as well. December is the worst for this, because we’re told that Christmas is for everyone and requires cold weather to celebrate. A storybook Christmas has cold and snow and a big hot meal. Here, it’s more likely to include a picnic by the lake with black swans demanding their share of the food and with unlimited cold drinks.

Being told to rug up during the summer holidays has a special absurdity, but when it’s negative temperatures overnight (-3.2 last night – I’m typing this at breakfast time feeling that sudden rush of warmth as things become less bitter) every “Isn’t it nice that summer is coming” kinda rankles.

Of all those who forget that the southern hemisphere is not the northern, the most annoying are those who insist that I’m wrong and that winter is not coming. Our autumn is fully settled in late April everywhere, and one in three years is cold by mid-May. This is one of those years. Winter may not be already here, but it’s sent very clear messages that it’s close.

I live in the mountains (inland), so it gets particularly chill here. Canberra is too dry, mostly, for snow (though we had snow in northern Canberra over the weekend) but one of the southern hemisphere’s best ski fields is merely a bit over an hour away. Not that I ski. I did, however once unintentionally provoke the Deputy Prime Minister to fall thirty metres in the snow. That was, however, in summer. The snow was remnant snow and it was the day he gave his particular speech at the top of our tallest mountain and… I put the rest of it into one of my novels, because it’s one of those incidents that sounds fictional and therefore was crying to be used in fiction.

Anyhow, the ski season has begun (just) and I now work late at nights.

Why late? It doesn’t get properly cold until 4 am here, and I would rather go back to bed until my toes don’t curl to protect themselves. This is not typically Australian, and, in fact, didn’t used to be typically Gillian. When I was a child I’d wake up before dawn to walk in the melting frost. As I age, more and more I like going back to bed on days like this.

My work day, in fact, will be shaped around how cold it is over the next three months. And what work does this day entail? Mostly research into how writers develop the worlds for their novels and how these worlds, in turn, can feel more or less real to readers. It doesn’t matter (I am discovering) whether or not the world has magic or if all the plant life is purple with turquoise spots. The world can still feel real when things are not like the worlds we know. It can still feel entirely fake when thing are depicted precisely as we know them. It all comes down to the world building and how the writer pulls that world into the story itself.

My fiction for the next little while depends on my mood. This month’s new writing is all about a light novel where I test some of my discoveries about how writers build and depict worlds. The episode I’m typing when I need a breath of warmth has an almost-human couple discovering that kittens, too, can become vampires. Also that braggarts and fools exist just as much in the world of the supernatural as in the world we know.

This week has a few extras and will be busy. I’m late with my tax, so that’s urgent, and I’m editing, and I’m working on my Patreon papers.

This month’s Patreon essay discusses the very curious relationship between Medieval French epic legends and MCU movies, and I’ll be delivering that paper live at a conference later this week (from my home computer). This month’s fiction for patrons includes the how the kitten’s household semi-domesticates that very cute vampire kitten, and this month’s advice to writers will explain how popular knowledge of famous figures can work in fiction.

And that’s my world this week. It’s busy, but not so busy I can’t sleep for an hour more. Since I started writing this, the temperature outside has gone up by a full degree. Soon the sun will beam loudly into my east-facing work area and everything will be almost-comfortable. I shall take that as a victory, because this year’s winter is going to be cold, if autumn already contains frost and black ice.

When I was younger, I dreamed of a good income. I also dreamed of living somewhere warmer (northern NSW or southern Queensland) in winter and in my more-comfortable mountains in summer. Now that I can’t pretend to be young, I complain about the weather. The reason for the complaint today is not, in fact, because it’s cold outside, but because someone left the security door open over the weekend and all the warmth leeched out of my flat and so the warmest I can get it is fifteen degrees (fifty nine degrees for US readers). Crunchy cold grass underfoot ceases to be exotic when the warmest corner of indoors is under sixteen. And I’m sure there’s a joke in there… but my brain is frozen. Even the postie (who just delivered a parcel) tells me that it’s brisk outside. If you’re reading this from the part of the planet that careens towards summer, this morning I envy you, so very much. How much is so very much? Probably about ten degrees.

Turning Away Wrath

personby Nancy Jane Moore
schedulePosted on

You have probably heard about Jordan Neely, the man choked to death by a another subway passenger in New York City because he was yelling. By all accounts that I have seen, Neely wasn’t doing anything violent, though he was certainly making others uncomfortable.

Elie Mystal provides an excellent account of all the issues involved – including race, mental illness, homelessness, and even the possibility that the man who did the choking, a former Marine, overreacted with violence because he hadn’t received enough care for his own traumas. Mystal points out:

But, to be honest, the racism saturating every part of this story is only the most obvious of its horrors. This murder takes many of the problems we have in our society and shoves them into a giant melting pot.

A lot of homeless people live in my neighborhood, many of them under a freeway and BART overpass a few blocks away, others camped in a nearby park. They are often rousted out and have to find other places to go. Meanwhile, there are vacancies in the brand new overpriced apartment buildings put up all over this area.

The people living on the street can’t afford those places, of course. Studio apartments start at over $2,000/month.

Some of the people on the street are mentally ill. Some are just very broke. I give a few of them a wide berth when I see them, but I have never felt compelled to attack any of them, even the ones who scream abuse at all and sundry. I don’t feel threatened. Mostly, I feel horrified that the richest country in the world does not take care of its most fragile people.

Before the pandemic, I was better at being compassionate, but the need to keep my distance from others for my own health got me out of the habit. I’m trying to get back to being kind again, though I know that a couple of bucks and a word is so much less than they need.

As I read about the death of Jordan Neely, I remembered a well-known story from the late Aikido teacher Terry Dobson, an American who trained in Japan with the founder of Aikido back in the early 1960s. That story too took place on a subway (this one in Tokyo) and it featured a very drunk and abusive man. It was entitled “A Kind Word Turneth Away Wrath.”

I first read it in a 1985 anthology edited by Richard Strozzi Heckler called Aikido and the New Warrior, though it occurs to me that I might have heard the story in the dojo before I read the book. It’s the kind of story that Aikido people love to tell.

I suspect from the title alone you can guess that the situation was resolved very differently from the recent killing in New York, though it was not Dobson, a martial artist then in his prime, who resolved it but rather an elderly and very traditional Japanese man.

Every time I read this story, I tear up.

I could summarize it here, but it is so much better in Dobson’s own words and I was able to find it online here under the title “A Soft Answer.” 

Give it a read, and then give it some deep thought.

We don’t have to live like this.

In Troubled Times: Being Allies

personby Deborah J. Ross
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I started a blog series, “In Troubled Times” after the 2016 presidential election. Folks I trust said that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better. That’s true now, too, so here’s the first in a renewed series.

Recently, I had a conversation with someone I love dearly who, like so many of us, belongs to overlapping groups that have been targeted by the current crop of hate-mongers. So many of the people and causes I support are at risk, it’s easy to feel battered by prejudice, overwhelmed, infuriated, and hopeless. But, in a moment of spontaneity, I found myself saying, “We can be good allies for one another.”

Let me break this down a bit. There is more than enough hatred to go around. There will never be a lack of worthy causes and people in need. No one of us can save everyone.

Thankfully, we are not all crazy (or desperate, or paralyzed by events) on the same day. Progress happens when we are actively pursuing it, but also when we allow ourselves to take a break, tend to our inner lives, and allow others to carry the load. The world does not rise or fall solely based on any one of us. This is why solidarity is essential. Insisting on being on the front lines all the time is an engraved invitation to exhaustion. If we look, we will always find those who, for this moment anyway, have energy and determination.

I think the secret to being a good ally is to realize that we can be that person for someone else.

This requires paying attention.

It is not helpful to do for someone what they can and should do for themselves. How then are we to discern when “helping” is arrogant interference? When is it a genuine offer and when does it result in telling the other person that they are inadequate and helpless to achieve their goal?

We ask. We listen. We give ourselves permission to appear clumsy and we forgive ourselves when we make mistakes.

Sometimes, the best thing we can ask is “How can I help?” and sometimes it is the worst, laying yet another burden on a person bowed down under them (“Oh god, I’ve got to think of something for her to do!”) Sometimes, saying, “Would you like me to help with that?” is the best, and sometimes it is the worst. Sometimes, “You are not alone” is a sanity-saver. Sometimes, it is a reminder of looming disaster. Sometimes, “I’m here and I care” is all the other person needs to hear, and sometimes it is worse than silence.

We listen. We ask. We pay attention.

The one thing we do not do is walk away. When I think of being an ally, I envision someone with whom I can be depressed, angry, volatile, and just plain wrong—and know that I will be held up by their unrelenting care for me. I can vent my frustration and they won’t abandon me. They will hear the pain and despair behind my words.

I want to be that ally for others. I want to be that safe person. I’m far from perfect at it, though. My feelings get hurt. I sop up the other person’s despair when I know better. I do my best to not walk away.

Listen. Forgive yourself. Take a break. Do what you can, when you can. Then pick yourself up and get back into the fight.

 

Up soon… “This too shall pass…”