Confessions of a Political Naif

I saw recently that Lyndon LaRouche had died. Hard to believe he reached the ripe old age of 96.

Mr. LaRouche played an unwitting part in my development of critical thinking and political awareness. It was he who taught me to actually read and think before voting.

I suppose it was in the 1980s, back when I lived in Illinois. Backers of the LaRouche movement or party, however you want to characterize it, secured many spots on the primary ballot for statewide offices. I'd heard his name bandied about in the media and thought the ideas he espoused were abhorrent. I knew I would never vote for such a man. 

What I didn't know, and was not revealed on the ballot, was that a whole herd of LaRoucheites was running. They had refreshingly "normal" names, easy to read, familiar as the people next door. A few were even women, which appealed to me greatly. When the primary election rolled around I hied me to the polls and blithely marked the ballot for all the women and people with names I could pronounce, without knowing anything about them. 

When the results tumbled in over the next day or two, I was horrified to realize that I had helped advance many of Lyndon LaRouche's favored candidates to the general election. I did that. I was responsible for these batshit crazies being put before the electorate and likely being put in office in the fall. It was my fault.

Between the primary and the general, I educated myself. I hadn't been the only one to succumb to that level of ignorance and laziness. It was a well-thought-out tactic on the part of LaRouche and his henchmen. They read the voters and I was one of them. It was the last time I went to the polls without arming myself ahead of time with enough information to make a reasonable choice.

I've nearly always voted. A few times I missed or sat out an election when I was out of the country or between residences. Other than that, I've cast my ballot in every election I could, beginning with the 1972 primary when I was finally old enough to vote. I had just turned 21, which was the voting age until it was lowered to 18 in July 1971. I proudly cast my vote for the presidential candidate, Shirley Chisolm. I had read and heard about her. Did I research the other candidates on that ballot? No, I just voted for all the Socialist Worker Party candidates and filled in with Democrats and women where needed. 

Moral of the Story: Don't vote unless you know who you're voting for! Political parties, TV personalities, social media buzz, and familiar names don't mean a thing if the politico in question is a charlatan. Dig deep and then VOTE! ---- every time they crack the door at the polling station.

Once upon a time in Gibraltar

Fifty years ago today, I was a bride. I was eighteen years old.

The love of my young life was a sailor stationed aboard the USS Canopus in Rota, Spain. I was a high school senior when we met. To me, it felt like a match made in heaven. He was six years older, gorgeous, worldly, smart, artistic, and divorced. That's why we went to Gibraltar to marry. It was 1969 and Franco was in power in Spain. Divorced people were not allowed to marry on Spanish soil, not even on an American military base in the base chapel. So we set out for British soil where they weren't so picky about such things.

As it happened, it was a Monday and the people who were married just before the weekend in the same office, by the same somewhat elderly, very British official, were John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Not that we saw them. But they did scandalize the officiating bureaucrat by showing up barefoot which he described with much indignation. Heaven forfend.

There is no remaining photographic evidence of our nuptials. They were lost somewhere in my parents' move from Spain to England. Nonetheless, I remember some small details. I was shocked to see myself referred to as a "spinster" on the marriage certificate. I did not like the dress I was wearing. It had been purchased for my HS graduation from the Base Exchange and was brown and white. Who wants to get married in brown? Was it an omen?

My family toasted us at a Chinese restaurant afterward, a treat not available where we lived. Altogether, it was a long and happy day. We took a train to Madrid for our wedding night, followed by a honeymoon hitchhiking through Spain and Morocco.

Fifty years is a long time whether or not a marriage lasts. And a relationship can outlive a marriage by a long shot. We had a son after 5 years and split up when he was a baby. Ever after, we've all been family. New marriages, more kids, many moves and life's vicissitudes haven't changed the fact that once upon a time there was love. And marriage. And fun.

I'm lucky to have had many lives in this one incarnation. 

Welcome Back, Kiddo!

I'm going to pretend I haven't been missing in action for the past nine months. I invite you to do the same.

The last time I wrote it was about protest, poverty, and education. There was a great deal of energy behind those issues nine months ago. I hope it's still simmering beneath the surface. In Trump time, nine months is somewhere between nine years and infinity.

I have had to look at my addiction to the news. Being retired and only working seven hours a week, I have a lot of time to get into mischief. Five days a week, I start my day by having coffee with Rachel. You know, the smartest talking head on cable tv. I rely on her to take apart the difficult issues and explain them in detail. Then, she calls in experts, legal and otherwise, to explain them some more. The teacher in me appreciates how thorough she is.

If there's time before work I switch to lighter fare, Seth Myers or Trevor Noah, for some short takes that will make me laugh while I eat my yogurt and fruit. If it's a work day, I'm ready to get out there and see my favorite senior citizens.

The best part of my little retirement job is the students I teach. No lesson plans; I teach the same two Qigong sets over and over. But each day is different because of the people I'm with. This meditative practice brings a measure of peace and centering as we keep all our moving-parts moving. 

If you're not over sixty-five, you might not understand the ways your body begins to sabotage you. Every morning is a new opportunity to wake up with a stitch in your back or new creaks in your knees. Pains come and go, or sometimes come and don't go. Things you took for granted all your life suddenly need more attention, like slowing down so your feet don't get out ahead of the rest of you. Or paying attention to what you're doing without distractions. Multi-tasking can spell disaster. And lost keys.

Slowing down to pay attention has lengthened my days. Learning to breathe, to focus on the present and appreciate what I see, are side effects of this Qigong practice. Or maybe the whole point.

One of the blessings of aging is that competition falls away. When you know too many people who have already died, every day is a blessing.


As I watch entirely too many videos of politicians, read too many news stories, try to keep all the Russian names straight, and spend too much time on twitter, I try to balance it out with focus. Breath. Movement. And laughing with my seven classes of folks who used to be strangers and now are people I treasure. 

All of us are in this together. Worry doesn't help. Time to breathe as one, relax, and love what is right before us.

Unexpected goat love.

Why I March

Teachers took to the streets on May 16 in North Carolina. It's been a long, hard decade for education since the economic meltdown. When the state legislature and governor's mansion changed hands, things became grim indeed. They've never recovered and now public schools feel under attack from all sides.

I started this blog when I left the classroom in 2011. The changes were already apparent. Raises were a distant memory. Classroom budgets diminished and I found myself spending more of my own money and tapping parents for basics. I hear it got a whole lot worse after I left teaching. Retirement gave me some distance but I still talk to friends I left behind.

This has been a week of public protest. On May 14, the Poor People's Campaign kicked off with direct action and civil disobedience in more than thirty cities across the country. Raleigh was one of them. The crowd was small compared to the Moral Mondays from a few years ago, but the issues are the same. Poverty, racism, healthcare, living wage, education. People are coming together.

These two actions back-to-back have had me thinking. They are so intertwined, poverty and education. I think back to my days in the classroom and the poverty that was evidenced every day in our school.

It wasn't one of those terrible schools you see pictured on the documentaries. Actually, the building was sound and recently renovated. The school staff was caring and dedicated. It stands in a neighborhood whose residents often struggle. Many of the 6 to 8-year-olds I taught showed signs of stress.

I remember one little boy who, after being given a toothbrush by the visiting dental educators was thrilled because he had his own now and wouldn't have to share a toothbrush with his siblings.

I regularly had children who were underdressed for the weather or showed up in clothes that hadn't been washed recently. Some came to school too late for breakfast and arrived hungry almost every day. Some whispered that they hadn't eaten any supper the night before. I kept large bags of cereal behind my desk and cheese crackers in the closet for such situations. 

Sometimes they would go through the lunch line only to find that their account was empty. I wasn't the only teacher or teacher-assistant who kept extra money on account to cover those lunches.

Serious behavior problems arose. A few times I had to report suspicion of abuse. More often, a child would "act out" unaccountably, hiding under a table or crying and rocking inconsolably. I made many referrals to our overburdened counselors or assistant principal. 

Our school had a burgeoning population of Spanish-speaking students during the years I was there. Despite the language barriers with both the children and their parents we managed, and all of us grew together. What I did not anticipate were the problems particular to immigrant families. There was the boy who took everything home every night because this was the third school he had attended during the current year. Sure enough, one day he simply never came back. When one of my little girls confided that her daddy had been taken away and had to go back to Mexico, I was stunned. She was devastated. My heart broke for her.

Too many of these kids had to deal with situations that would have been unthinkable to me as a child: the boy who was going out to dinner to celebrate his dad's birthday but they ended up at the ER after the girlfriend stabbed his father, the girl who came to school one morning talking about the man who had been shot dead at the end of her driveway the night before, the number of kids who lived with grandparents or other relatives because their parents were on drugs or locked up, the child who had to get up before dawn to ride with his taxi-driving mother until time to go to school.

Poverty. I thought I knew about it. I had been on welfare and food stamps when my son was an infant. I had scrounged and worked multiple low wage jobs to hold body and soul together. But I realized it was a whole different level of experience the day I tried to teach a sequencing lesson to one of my first-graders.

I spread out six brightly colored picture cards entitled "How to make a Bed." His task was to put them in order. He hesitated then moved the cards around, obviously guessing. I gave him hints, but it didn't help. Finally, he told me he didn't know. He had never had a bed. He slept on the couch or the floor in a sleeping bag.

 Poverty and Education. That's why I march.

Poor People's Campaign, Raleigh NC, 5/14/2018

Sudden Change

Jill and Todd

Jill and I are in the pause, the hush and intake of breath that follows a sudden death. Yesterday, her brother Todd died unexpectedly. He was only 49 years old. The stillness is intense.

We all do it, I think. We chug through life doing what needs to be done, following routines and prescribed roles day after day. There's comfort in the mundane --- grocery shopping, laundry, lawn mowing, jobs. Even with the certainty that nothing stays the same for long, we walk through days and weeks as though today is the permanent blueprint. Until it isn't.

The phone call marks a break. There was before and then there is after. Before was normal. After, unpredictable. It takes time to adjust, as though the molecules have rearranged themselves into a new shape that is not recognizable in this moment. 

Previous losses crowd to the top, loosed from their moorings once more, adding to the sense of disorientation. It's easy to stand for minutes with the refrigerator door open, unseeing, lost in thought. Dogs nudge questioningly, aware that something is amiss. Conversations lapse in mid-sentence.

Gradually, it fills in again, the empty spaces begin to shrink but never disappear entirely. The sudden impulse to text or send a picture doesn't hit as sharply over time. 

"He would love that . . ."

"She never got to see . . ."

A sudden scent or sound triggers memories that flood through, stabs of pain, then cleansed and washed away.

Farewell. You leave a self behind that will not be erased in the minds and hearts of those who knew you. Sleep well, Todd, and be at peace. 

                                                                                    Todd Hahn 1968-2018

Band-aids and Ice

Back in the golden, olden days of television, there was a show called WKRP in Cincinnati. Of the many memorable characters on this sitcom, a favorite of mine was Les Nessman, played by Richard Sanders. Les nearly always wore a band-aid. Most of the time it had nothing to do with the action; it was his schtick. That tickled my funny bone and it reminded me of being a kid.

My parents convinced us that band-aids could treat almost anything. Fall down and skin a knee? Wash with soap and water (ouch!), apply Mercurochrome (ouch!) or Merthiolate (double ouch!) and top with a band-aid. The injury didn't even have to involve broken skin. Come crying to Mom with a bump or bruise and she would give it a little rub or a kiss, and a band-aid. A goose-egg might bring out the waterproof pouch with the screw-on cap, filled with ice to relieve pain and swelling before the curative band-aid was applied.

Those strips were 1950s magic. Some of you who are old enough may remember that they came in metal containers with a hinged lid. The crackly wrapper on the strip itself was opened hygienically by pulling an orange thread down the side. No touching the sterile pad!

By the time I settled into classroom teaching in the early 2000s, late in my education career, the fear of litigation meant that we had returned to fifty years earlier when it came to children's daily scrapes. School nurses were few and far between; first aid consisted of band-aids and ice.

We sometimes speak of "slapping a Band-aid on it" when we treat problems with stop-gap measures. In business or politics, complex issues are often addressed in superficial ways to relieve the pressure of public opinion and put off effective examination or remedies for another day.

A band-aid won't cure a broken arm nor will feel-good legislation, however well-intentioned, bring relief to problems endemic to the society we've created. I have been reminded lately of the "common good" and the responsibility we have for each other. In times when the wider world seems fraught with conflict and dangers which I can do nothing about, my actions need to be directed close to home.

More than ever, I am called upon to be mindful, kind, and respectful. It may seem inadequate in the face of turmoil and uncertainty, but a well-placed band-aid and a kiss can create peace that angry words and hopelessness will never accomplish.

I wish you peace and serenity, whoever and wherever you are. We're all in this together.

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

I'm sorry. I haven't been able to write. My office was taken over by wild animals. You know how that goes.

Actually, I have spent so much time reading what other people have to say that my own thoughts and ideas got pushed out of the way. In other words, overwhelm to the Nth degree. I can't seem to stay off the news sites but all that reading leaves me with a twitchy eye and low-level depression. Not to mention too much ice cream and coffee. So, I have decided to take myself in hand and shake it off!

What do you want to talk about? No, not politics. Or Trump and his many henchmen. I could show you pretty pictures from vacationing in the Azores. 

That's the other old broad mentioned in the title of this blog.

 What's that? You don't know where (or maybe what) the Azores are? If I let you in on the secret do you promise not to tell and spoil this amazing paradise? Mum's the word. Look it up.

I could tell you about the novel I just published, which you can look for on Amazon and Kindle. But you should really read the other two first, since it's #3 in a series. Go ahead and look for Gaddy's Song.

Or #1 Way Out in Dog Heaven or #2 Haints in the Side Yard.

Haints are ghosts, for those of you not acquainted with southern vernacular. I'm beginning to think I've spent too much time with the specters. I'm noticing that when I am alone in the house, and sometimes even with others here, I detect the sweet, comforting scent of cherry pipe tobacco. A long time ago, when I was 11 or 12 and we had just moved to Germany, Dad went through a streak of smoking pipes. I think he liked the idea more than the actuality, but he acquired several handcrafted German pipes and a pipe stand and a humidor. I even saved up money to buy him a pipe one Christmas. I loved the smell of the tobacco and the smoke. Now I'm haunted by it, 14 years after his death.

It's not the first time I've been haunted by odors particular to my father's life. When we were clearing out the last house he and Mom lived in, the scent of bourbon wafted in the hallway and his bedroom. He was not a big drinker but enjoyed a party like the rest of us. Nobody had been in the house for awhile and it had already been five years since he died. But it was as clear as anything that he was raising a glass to the change that was underway. 



This time of year, I'm much more likely to remember my mother. It will be 3 years on December 15 since she passed on, Ella Fitzgerald singing her to the next world, Christmas lights and scents spiriting her away. 

Every year, through Advent season, we have a family tradition of lighting candles on the wreath and reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, one stave each week of Advent. This instructive ghost story is an annual reminder to live in the moment at hand, but also remember the past. The older I get, the more ghosts there are who inhabit my world. These ghosts of Christmas past aren't scary at all; my life is richer for their presence. And when they come bearing sensory gifts, so much the better.

Nancy, Lester, and all the rest ---- it's time to feast and celebrate. The love deepens with every passing year.

The Azore islands are Portuguese. 

Beautiful, secluded, magical.