Western Motel, by Wendy Drexler: a review

 

In bright detailed glimpses, Wendy Drexler shows us two landscapes: the Western landscape in which she grew up, and the terrain of her marriage, divorce, and falling in love again. 


My favorite section is the thread of poems entitled "Gas Stations, Drive-Ins, The Bright Motels."  My favorite single poem is "What Distance Brings." I know Wendy and her family personally, and other readers may close the book and think they do too.

Jewish Holiday Calendar 2013-2014

Here's a guide to scheduling around the Jewish holy days that I thought you might find useful.   I didn't write it, only edited it slightly and updated it each year, but I vouch for its accuracy.

Category I.     MOST JEWS PARTICIPATE.  Please do not schedule meetings around these dates.

ROSH HASHANAH (Jewish New Year) begins at sunset Wednesday, September 4, 2013 and continues through Friday, September 6.

YOM KIPPUR (Day of Repentance) begins at sunset on Friday, September 13 and continues through Saturday, September 14.  While Yom Kippur is a fasting day, meals are prepared in advance for the breaking of the fast at the end of 27 hours.

Typically, even some of the least religiously observant members of the Jewish community do not work on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah.   Please keep in mind that even though the holy day may begin at sunset, these are home ritual centered holy days, so a great deal of advance preparation is required.  In other words, please don't schedule a meeting for the afternoon preceding Rosh Hashanah because I will be cooking!

PASSOVER (Celebration of Freedom from Slavery in Egypt) begins at sunset on Monday, April 14, 2014; continues through nightfall on Tuesday, April 22.   THE FIRST TWO DAYS (through Wednesday evening, April 16) require refraining from work.   LOTS of cooking and preparation before this holy day.

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Category II.   Many observant Jews refrain from work.  I count myself as
observant.

SUKKOT (Festival of Booths, or Tabernacles) begins at sunset Wednesday, September 18, and lasts through Wednesday, September 25.  THE FIRST TWO DAYS traditionally require abstaining from work.

SHMINI ATZERET (Eighth Day Assembly, ending Sukkot) begins at sunset on Wednesday, September 25, and lasts through Thursday, September 26.

SIMCHAT TORAH (Rejoicing with the Torah) begins at sunset on Thursday, September 26, and lasts through Friday, September 27.

The LAST TWO DAYS of PASSOVER begin at sunset Sunday, April 20, 2014 and last through Tuesday, April 22.

SHAVUOT (Festival of Weeks, or Pentecost) begins at sunset on Tuesday, June 3, 2014; continues through Thursday, June 5.

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Category III. Observance doesn't require refraining from work.

HANUKKAH (Festival of Lights) begins at sunset on Wednesday, November 27 and continues through nightfall Thursday, December 5.  Every night, candles on the Hanukkiah (eight-armed candelabra, sometimes called "menorah") are lit.

PURIM - Begins at sunset on Saturday, March 15, 2014; continues through Sunday, March 16.

And a few other seasonal and historical holy days that I won't mention, because enough already!  If you want to know more about the meaning of these holidays, you might consult www.jewfaq.org or the book Seasons of Our Joy, by Arthur Waskow.

Typically, if you ask a Jewish man if the afternoon preceding a holy day is an acceptable time to have a meeting, he will say yes, because what most Jewish men do is show up at the dining table, fork in hand.  For women, the two days preceding each holiday are incredibly intense because of the cleaning, preparation and food preparation that takes place.  We look forward to the day when these tasks will be more equitably distributed.

A final note which I thought worth adding from my own experience: Even if someone (who might even be Jewish) tells you "It's no big deal" to schedule meetings and conferences on these days, doesn't mean that that's true for all Jews.   People maintain different levels of observance, and a more secular Jew may work on a day when I would not.   When in doubt, please ask!   I can't speak for other Jewish consultants, staff, board members, and interns, but I know I always prefer to be asked.

Thank you!

Alien vs. Predator, or, Why Liberals Lose When They Take on Corporate Power: Part I

All right, it's the moment you've been waiting for. I've been explaining why "liberal" is not a badge of shame (as the O'Reillys and Limbaughs of the world would have it be) but the name of an honorable tradition of thought about freedom, justice, and the pursuit of happiness. So why don't I call myself a liberal? What more do I want?

Plenty! Let's remember what liberalism has always been about: liberty, the freedom to make a good life of one's own design. And let's recall the strategy that liberals have used since the late nineteenth century to ensure liberty. Modern liberals use state power to check and constrain the power of capitalism, which they see as posing the greatest threat to our ability to live free and flourish. 

Does the strategy of posing state power against corporate power work? Only if we control the state AND state power is stronger than the power of capitalism. But neither of these is true.

Do We Control the State?

The primary tool of democracy is elections. Leave aside all the questions about stolen or fraudulent elections that agitated so many of my friends in 2000 and 2004, and even the voter repression tactics the Republicans practiced in 2008 and 2012. When elections run right, are they a powerful enough tool so we, the people, can use them to get the government we want?

Edward S. Greenberg once asked "what parties and elections would have to look like if they were to truly be vehicles by which political decision makers were kept responsible and responsive to the American people" (The American Political System: A Radical Approach, 1989). I like his answers.

1. Candidates and parties should present clear policy choices to the American people, and these policy choices should concern important issues.

2. Once elected, officials should try to carry out promises made during the campaign.

3. Once elected, officials should be able to transform campaign promises into binding public policy.

4. Elections should strongly influence the behavior of those elites responsible for making public policy.

It's not clear that ANY of these four conditions are met in America.

1. Sure, the last presidential race presented us with clear choices on some crucial issues. Some of these choices were very narrow, however.  Should we keep on using drone strikes abroad and surveillance at home at the current, unprecedented level, or become even more aggressive?  Should we cripple the economic recovery through across-the-board federal budget cuts or by targeted cuts?  For most of us (and especially for the poor and the unemployed), these are not choices but threats.

Meanwhile, out of 535 Congressional elections, only a handful were seriously contested. Bottom line: if you wanted to change the way government works by finding enough candidates who agreed with you and electing them into office, you were out of luck.

2. Do candidates try to keep their campaign promises? The answer seems to be, "When they must." But LBJ ran promising "no wider war" in Vietnam and then sent tens of thousands more troops. Ford (an unelected president) pardoned Nixon after swearing not to. Reagan ran against "big government" and created the biggest budget deficits in history, before the current administration! George H.W. Bush famously promised "no new taxes," but bowed to reality and broke his promise. Clinton ran on "putting people first," but as Bob Woodward documented, he actually put the needs of bond markets first--he cut social programs that help the many and the vulnerable in order to shrink the budget deficit, pleasing the few and the rich.

George W. was the dangerous exception to the rule. If we hadn't stopped him from keeping his campaign promises, God help us!  Obama was very careful to raise hope without making very many promises.  He also has the built-in excuse that whatever he tries to do, the Republicans automatically oppose.

3. American government is set up to keep elected officials from making broad changes in policy. Most of the time, control of the three branches of government is split between the two major parties. When the national government is split, it's difficult to make dramatic changes on issues people know and care about.

When the Presidency, the Congress, and the Supreme Court are all dominated by people from one side of the political spectrum, they still have a tough time making changes. Each branch is protective of its own powers and jealous of giving too much to either of the others. They compete as much as they coordinate, despite party. Besides, as we have seen in the recent NSA scandal, the Republican Party includes moralists and libertarians (and some out-and-out fascists). The Democrats house technocrats, progressives, and socialists. Party affiliation doesn't make them concert their efforts around one platform. Most are too busy calculating what will ensure their own personal re-election!

Finally, if the federal government seems united, then state and local governments can oppose and at least delay the national agenda. Look at Massachusetts with gay marriage, California with medical marijuana and tough clean air standards, or southern states' opposition to civil right and anti-poverty legislation and programs. For better or worse, we live in a system of fragmented state power. And this is the tool we want to use to humanize an entire economic system based on self-interest?

4. Even if we had competitive elections with choices that reflect what people truly need--and politicians tried to keep the promises that got them elected--and government weren't set up to impede the progress of any dramatic changes--most of the choices that affect our daily lives are not made by government. Quoting Greenberg again, "Elections hardly affect decisions relating to the location of businesses, the growth of cities, the development of technology, the center of work, the shape of educational experience, or the distribution of wealth and income."

Beyond Wishful Thinking

It's still worth fighting elections to put candidates in office who can use state power for what it's worth. But it's not worth as much as we imagine. We are strangers in our own land, and when liberals think they can address the alienation of vast parts of the population through another law or another policy, they are engaged in the wishful thinking that has become another synonym for "liberal."

Moses' Family Stories: Reading Deuteronomy for Resilience

I heard an astonishing thing on WBUR's "On Point" this week.  Apparently, the more we tell our children their family stories, the stronger and happier they are. 

Bruce Feiler, who has also written about Abraham and about "walking the Bible," explained research that makes this point to host Tom Ashbrook.  Here's a succinct summary from a parenting website:

Marshall Duke, a psychologist from Emory University, began exploring resilience in children in the 1990s. His sense was that when children knew about their families that they handled the ups and downs of life more easily. He and a colleague, Dr. Fivush, developed a 20-question survey called “Do You Know” that they gave to children to find out what kinds of things they knew about their families. As reported recently in the New York Times, “The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem and the more successfully they believed their families functioned.” Much to their surprise, the “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness.

Today, Jews around the world let Moses tell us our family stories.  We begin reading D'varim, or the book of Deuteronomy.  In it, the aging Moses tells people two full generations younger than he all the things the research says they need to know: "stories featuring an oscillating narrative including both elements of success and failure, stories of living with and overcoming adversity."

Let us listen to these stories and become more resilient.  Let us teach them diligently to our children so that they can share the sources of strength.

Look for the Liberal Label

One of the tools we're going to need to change America is an accurate understanding of what "liberal" means. For 20 years, conservatives and right-wingers have tried to turn the name into a term of abuse. But I think the Rev. Jesse Jackson is right when he reminds us, "America was a liberal idea from the start." 

The Liberal Revolution

To understand what liberalism means, go back to the days when Christian kings and queens ruled their European nations in the name of God. Each person was assigned his or her role in life: rich and powerful aristocrat, poor peasant, serf tied to the land. You were not supposed to have a life of your own. That was considered unnatural, unnecessary, and even sinful. You were supposed to live out your role in this life and hope for a reward in the next one.

But a new idea about the good human life began to spread (first in cities), and its name was liberty, or freedom. To be free meant not to live a life determined in every detail by tradition but to have choices, and to make them as your own reason and tastes told you to. Free men (and to a limited extent, women) had property of their own they didn't owe to a lord or king. Free people made rules together to govern their relations with each other. They called these rules "laws," and they began to consider the laws free people imposed on themselves as equal or superior to the dictates of religion or the commands of the state. So, freedom and self-government became linked.

Notice that in those days at the end of the Middle Ages, the dominant forces shaping people's lives against their wills were government and religious authority. That's why liberals, people who believed in freedom, had to try to limit government and separate church from state. They confronted what they saw as the biggest forces against freedom in their times.

Enter Capitalism

Flash forward to the Industrial Revolution. The new system of production gave the people who had money to invest (capitalists) power over everyone else. If you wanted to work, increasingly, you had to work for them, for the hours and wages they set. If you didn't want to accept their terms, you were "free" to go elsewhere. But capitalists were "free" to wait you out. While you were looking for work at a decent wage, and starving, they were sitting on their wealth--or hiring your neighbor who got desperate earlier than you did.

Freedom in a capitalist system, in other words, had to mean something different from what it meant in the Middle Ages. Government and religious institutions still had the power to impose on people's lives, but so did the rich. And the tools liberals had developed to carve out a sphere of liberty in the middle ages didn't work against the power of capitalism. Indeed, the owners were oppressing the working class, all in the name of freedom!

Separation of church from state didn't separate wealth from power. Government under law could at the same time be government under class rule. As the writer Anatole France put it, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." 

Redefining Liberalism

What was a liberal to do? People who believed in freedom had two choices.

1. They could stick with their old definition of liberty and give up the broader notion behind it: that to be free meant having the chance to live a flourishing human life of your own making. Many traditional-style liberals went with this option. Today, we call them conservatives! (That's why conservatism is such a mixed bag. It includes the people who respect religious tradition and political authority above all, as some people have done since the Middle Ages, and it also includes people who believe in limiting government even if that means inequality and immorality survive and spread.)

2. They could expand their definition of liberty to include ways of ensuring people had the material prerequisities of a good life. Without food, clothing, shelter, and education, the new liberals realized, people are just not in a position to make choices about what kind of life they want to live--or to put those choices into practice.

Liberalism: Still About Freedom

Sometimes conservatives accuse this new kind of liberalism of forgetting about freedom in order to achieve equality. But liberals don't see it that way. FranklinRoosevelt, for instance, spoke of the New Deal as involving Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and expression, freedom of every person to worship God in his or her own way, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The first two are expressions of traditional liberalism, and "freedom from want" is as clear an expression of the new liberalism as anyone has ever formulated.

The new liberals didn't stop worrying about the power of the state to oppress. They made a calculation that they could use state power to check and constrain the power of capitalism. Agree or disagree, but don't let anyone tell you liberalism is some wild notion ungrounded in reality. Liberalism has produced the greatest freedom as well as the greatest prosperity this country has ever known.

Then why am I not a liberal myself? That will wait for a future post.