The Lonely Lecturer #getmoneyoutofpolitics

I had my doubts. Global Noise, a sister organization to Occupy Wall Street, had a permit to hold a street event at the plaza in downtown Seattle. The plan was to have a speaker give an hour long lecture about how the bankers and the rest of the financial services brethren are both waging and winning a war on the rest of us.

The speaker would be from our Get Money Out of Politics (GMOP) group, a small but earnest collection of political activists who came together as refugees from Occupy. Randy is our designated speaker and expert on the evils of the financial services cabal. He has a prepared slide show on the topic and is eager to engage the financially uninformed public. Possibly too eager.

I'm a veteran of sparsely attended rallies; I'm cautious now. The talk wouldn't begin until 7 pm, so that would be a lengthy, detailed lecture on financialization held outdoors in the darkness of  mid-October.
After a beautiful, extended season of sunshine and no rain, the Seattle rainy season began about a week before the plaza speaker event.

I am desperately unenthusiastic about attending this event, but I am a loyal team player and this is my group. The day is chilly, overcast, and the rain falls intermittently. I'm feeling glum as I board the bus to head downtown. I'm not at all clear as to the agenda prior to the lecture, but GMOP will be setting up a table with informational handouts and political buttons to sell. There might be dancing in the streets, or fellow activists might be banging on pots and pans to protest the unfair debt burden on the masses.

I arrive about an hour before the lecture is to begin. I see a nearly empty plaza; no dancing, no banging on pots and pans. At least I'm conveniently in downtown Seattle. I go shopping.

As lecture time nears, I saunter over to the darkened plaza and find the GMOP table manned by five or six compatriots. The props for speaker Randy are set up; the sound system is now playing dance music and possibly a dozen people are gathered. At least it's not raining and Randy is still game to go on with the show. The turnout is beyond disappointing; it's the least attended event imaginable. The situation is so preposterous, I turn unexpectedly giddy.

Professor Randy, who is actually a medical doctor, appears undaunted, and presents the full, unabridged lecture to the motley crowd. A few people are actually listening and paying attention. On all sides of the plaza, shoppers continue shopping; still resolutely uninformed. 

Friday Night Lecture

Crowd Shot

The Lonely Lecturer

Altercation with an Anarchist Clown

I miss the Occupy action that never really happened except in New York for a brief period. Instead of a raging river of protesters, Occupy drained off into much smaller tributaries, or work groups. Those of us who had spent the Bush years sitting quietly fuming in front of our computers, and then watched Obama genuflect to Wall Street, couldn't wait to get out of our chairs and into the streets in search of the equally outraged. But in Seattle, Occupy was quickly divided by purist political views and tactics; the number of protesters sinking to inconsequential.

When two serious organizers tried to revive the march on the banks, I was hopeful. I was ready. The march was advertised as non-violent on the Facebook event page, with an appeal to the more reckless element to stay out of it. The rock throwers did stay home, but the organizers invited the anarchist clowns.

Around 200 people signed up to march; a very modest response. I remained hopeful that others who  had no affinity for Facebook organizing tools would join us, but on that particular morning in mid-July, a cold, battering rain storm came through. The turn out was abysmal. Those who did show up looked like semi-professional protesters; we were very short on seriously fed up members of the civic-minded middle class. The rain had stopped and I was carrying my best protest sign so I dutifully stayed with the cause.

Gen'ral Malaise photo from his Facebook page

The police presence for this march was inconspicuous; the bicycle patrol looked bored and non-threatening. The clowns were prancing about, keeping up a constant patter. The clown known as General Malaise (or Gen'ral as he likes to misspell it), abruptly changed the mood to ugly street theater. He pointed his furled umbrella directly in a policeman's face and pretending it was a gun, began "shooting"  while delivering a taunting harangue. Without conscious thought, I stepped in front of the General, put my protest sign in front of his "gun" and demanded that he stop. I was suddenly a fourth grade teacher on a field trip and I was not putting up with this behavior.

I imagine the General experienced flashbacks of all the elementary teachers who had ever reprimanded him; he went ballistic. I was astonished by his reaction, maybe because he looked like a clown. I reached out to put my hand on his shoulder to calm him down. Mistake. The General apparently decided I'd tried to rip his arm off. Flashbacks of teaching nuns coming after him with rulers raised to strike perhaps. It was a surreal circumstance to have an anarchist clown shrieking that I had assaulted him on a downtown street in front of a stately banking establishment. The police wisely ignored it all.

At My Feet

Earth Day Poem by Makenna

with a little help from her Grandma

 Kindergarten assignment:

Earth


At my feet

Rolling ball

The flowers bloom

Herbs to eat.

Ducks on river

Ants in dirt

Your day.

We've Got Your Back

Discussing World Architecture with Jackie

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was my next door neighbor in a small, rural village in Ohio. Not credible in my waking state, but dream logic allows for a lot of suspended disbelief. The house next door to my childhood home was referred to as the preacher's house and all the Methodist preachers and their families dutifully moved in and out on a five year rotation. Flexible dream logic made it unnecessary to account for the fact that neither Jackie, nor either of her husbands, was ever a Methodist minister. She lived alone there, and as in real life, she was a woman of mystery. Maybe she was in a witness protection program. No one would've thought to look for her in Ohio, whatever she was hiding from. I had a cordial, neighborly relationship with her, but we are both quite reserved and did not impose on each other. 

The real time dream event is taking place in some ultra cosmopolitan city where Jackie and I meet again at a cocktail party; Ohio is the back story. The party is a crush of sophisticates milling about in rarefied space. Jackie moves about the room in perfect harmony and confidence; she's radiant in a tastefully spangled dress of dark blue and black that catches the light and illuminates her face. A really implausible back story for an equally implausible dream event.

Jackie spots me and pushes her way through the crowd to hobnob with me. She is Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in her element, not my quiet neighbor in hiding. She seems to remember me quite fondly; effusive but with reserve still intact. I am completely enthralled by my old friend Jackie in a way that I simply wasn't in Ohio. She is enthusiastically commenting on a book she has recently read, and asks if I know of the book. I have not read the book nor heard of it, probably never would read the book; something to do with the masterworks in world architecture. But in the little circle now surrounding Jackie and me, we are all very excited and upbeat so I say I love the book too. A friend, who is standing beside me, is nodding and smiling and says she was quite sure I would've read that book. Well, deep shit, I'm thinking. Someone is going to find me out before I can sneak away and read the damn thing. But Jackie is ready to move on, and of course no one else is going to quiz me on a book they didn't read either. 

Jackie's smile seems genuine. She expresses regret that I did not come to visit her more when we lived next door in Ohio, and the regret seems genuine too. Then Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis drifts back into the multitudes. 

I wake up wondering why in the world I didn't visit her more when we were neighbors in Ohio. I didn't even get to see how she had decorated the old parsonage, or see her library. We could have started a book club. Maybe I would've liked discussing world architecture. 

Permanently Elsewhere

Before his cancer diagnosis, my brother Barry had been remarkably healthy with no forewarning of the exhausting discomfort that nearly continuous chemotherapy treatment would bring. He died in November of 2019 after a three year struggle with leukemia. Throughout his life and including his final difficult years, the piano was his steady companion. His own piano lived in his bedroom, not sitting regally in the living room or

stuck away in some dusty corner of the house.

Piano man, sibling reunion in 2017

As adults, Barry and I were close, but as children the seven year age difference gave my older brother an aura of great mystery. From my child perspective, Barry didn't actually live with us. As a teenager, he enjoyed unique parental indulgence to come and go as he pleased though I never heard it discussed or remarked upon by other family members. He spent most of his waking hours elsewhere and as he was years older than me, I was usually in bed asleep whenever it was he made it home for the night. Some of that freedom may have been because he worked in my father's business and had a special permit to drive even before the legal age of sixteen. He took on a worldly, grown-up appearance from a very early age.

Barry in jaunty military cap; I'm the wee one in authentic play clothes before Oshkosh b'gosh

When I was around ten years old, Barry drove me to a movie theater in our closest small city, a rare event for me. The movie was Dangerous Crossing, a black & white noirish, mystery film. Barry dropped me off, left to hang out with friends, and picked me up when the movie got out. At the time, I was in absolute wonderment at my brother's blasé indifference to this incredible movie experience. It added to the mystique. 

For anyone who went through high school before the Russian satellite named Sputnik was launched in October of 1957, high schools in small, rural towns often seemed like little more than an excuse to organize sports teams. Barry was athletic but chose not to participate in school sports. By not playing team sports, he kept a relatively low profile; he didn't spend his free time at basketball or baseball practice. Neither did he spend his time studying or doing any type of homework, but his grades were never discussed and didn't seem to be a problem. Barry was exceptionally smart and apparently school in that day required little effort.

Barry was, however, a natural musician and could play trumpet, guitar, and piano without lessons or formal training of any sort. While this talent endeared him to the school music teacher and the church choir director, it had rather the opposite effect on his peers in the sports-minded farming community. He was largely absent from our house, but his life elsewhere did not include much time spent in the small town either. I never asked my brother then where he spent his free time, but I was always gloriously happy when he made an appearance. He would sit at the piano in the dining room and play jazz, blues and boogie-woogie and I was enthralled. 

Years later, I learned that while still in high school, Barry played piano at a local night club on weekends. He would have been underaged to even be in a night club, let alone working there. If I ever questioned Barry or my parents about this odd arrangement, I don't explicitly remember their answer. Perhaps they all believed that a normal life was not probable for my brother in that small town and that the unconventional arrangement was all that prevented Barry from dropping out of school and going permanently elsewhere. He mostly floated about in his own world during this period, and barely registered the existence of his brothers and sisters unless we were being especially annoying. It was all the more surprising then that he so dramatically changed the trajectory of life for three of his younger siblings.  

After serving several years in the army overseas, Barry returned home and transplanted himself to the San Francisco Bay Area. And one by one, as we came of age, he invited my sister, my brother and I to leave the provincial life in Ohio for a more cosmopolitan experience. The transition for all of us was not without high drama and while Barry didn't hover over us, he did provide an emotional base camp where we could always retreat and revive. 

Barry and California siblings posing for the cover of a 70's rock album but without the music. 

Siblings in birth order from left to right

My brothers and sisters were not always perfectly congenial together but in later years, we put sibling rivalries and resentments aside and the six of us periodically gathered for reunions. Barry's death along with aging and assorted infirmities prevents these happy occasions now and we stoically accept meeting on Zoom instead. I find it much harder to accept my brother Barry's absence.