Strange Times with Covid-19

March 28, 2020March 28, 2020 ~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 7 Comments

It’s been two weeks since we last ate out. Sunday March 15th. We had bought more plants at Whitfill’s Nursery and decided, what the hell, we’re hungry, and Luci’s is right around the corner. The lunch crowd munched away under a celestially beautiful sky. Normal.

The healthcare company where I work sent us white-collar workers home early last week. Thankfully, what I do can be done anywhere with a laptop and Internet. Two days into my isolation, I woke up with a red rash under my right eye. I’ve had it a week now. That’s great timing for you! I write about contact allergic reactions to all kinds of shit in the dermatology area of the company. If my rash does not go away, do I drive down to see the dermatologist there? Or do I just wait for it to pass and hope it does not take over my face?

Last week, while taking our late afternoon walk, a perfectly normal-looking young man, standing by a bank of mailboxes across the street, caught our eye. His backpack lay on the ground nearby. He had one leg lifted. “He can’t be,” my husband said. But yes, he was. Changing his pants in broad daylight. I discreetly averted my eyes. He saw us and called out, “Sorry, I have to change my pants.” “Whatever you have to do, I replied.”

We did the 6:00 a.m. senior hour at Fry’s Tuesday morning. Rather dystopian, a whole store filled with fading people. Still, we got a 12-pack of toilet paper, so it was worth it.

A relative called yesterday with a tip he’d heard at a business meeting. “Listen,” he said. “I’m not supposed to spread this around, but I’m telling you. The governor is going to close the state. A Shelter-in-Place order is going to be announced on the weekend.” We immediately ran to Safeway to stock up even more. (Is this hoarding, I wonder.) It is now Saturday morning. Last word from the news is that such an order is not deemed necessary. My shelves are groaning.

My daughter in Oakland face-timed me yesterday. She lost her server job last week. For a few days distributing food from the restaurant to food pantries and shelters gave her purpose–800 eggs to responsibly dispose of. Now the deeper reality is setting in. She rents a room in a house with four other people, three of whom are also facing loss of income. They had a meeting with their landlord to discuss the situation. He was willing to take 800 dollars for April. Great, they all thought. But the remaining 24 hundred would be due down the line. They are considering rent strike. She thinks rage is the proper response to what is happening.

My husband informed me he has a slightly sore throat this morning. He is seventy-three years old. He talked on the phone and Skyped for hours yesterday, in between drags on a cigarette. I am going to assume all is well.

Through all this uncertainty, another question niggles my mind. When I recycle my milk and juice cartons, do I leave the little plastic cap screwed on? Or does that spoil the batch? If you know, do please share. It is driving me crazy.

Sheriff Joe’s Jails: An Escape Story

August 30, 2017August 31, 2017 ~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 20 Comments

“America’s toughest sheriff” has escaped a fate so poetically just as to make the gods weep. Unlike the inmates in his county jails, he will never peer from the other side of the bars. He will never eat the green bologna sandwiches. He will never be paraded around in chains and striped pajamas or pass a 110 ℉ summer day in his “tent city” “concentration camp.” He will never be subject to the harassment of ill-educated detention officers. He will never wear the threadbare pink underwear warmed by a hundred asses before his.

It’s been my privilege to to get an inside view of Sheriff Joe’s jails. Back in the relatively progressive late nineties, I taught English through a local college program to largely Hispanic inmates at Durango and Towers jails. I remember dodging a puddle on a dank November morning, the nauseating smell of the nearby dog pound greeting me on my first day. I, of course, my freedom but a few hours away, could sweep aside the dismal emotions provoked by that scene.

A Short Escape from the Sheriff’s Clutches

My stint in the Maricopa jails lasted a year. Five mornings a week, I passed through the clanging doors with my hand-outs, took possession of my bundle of stubby bowling-score-card pencils, and held court with my captive audience for four hours. They were an appreciative group, but not because I wowed them with my superior teaching skills. My class was one of their only opportunities to escape the tedium, the institutional squalor, and the hostile provocations of both other inmates and some of the staff. (I once witnessed a detention officer taunting an inmate in a holding cell, the latter clearly crazed and already out of control.) Sadly, the program was discontinued. A waste of taxpayer money.

Some prisoners found escape in other ways. One day, a student presented me with a small gift: a woven necklace of a cross embedded in a heart. Fine and delicate, it had been fashioned from pale pink and white thread. The workmanship amazed me. I should have guessed how my student had managed to get his material, but I had to ask. It was only when he smilingly pulled at the band of his pink underwear that I understood. It seems such weaving was a kind of folk art practiced by several of the Mexican students in my class. And lacking few other resources—save snack bags or gum wrappers— they picked the thread from their prison garb.

While that job gave me a look inside the jails, it was not my only encounter with Sheriff Joe’s domain. Between 2014 and 2016, my son was a guest in those very jails on several occasions, each visit stemming in one way or another from his addiction to heroin and associated infractions. On each occasion, after detoxing on the filthy floor of the holding cell and later the sick pod, he fell in with the dull routine.

For him escape came in the way of a dog-eared book, a smoke in the yard, a talk with me on the phone—which entirely depended on my being able to pick up before the call went to voice mail. He never got a visit, though. It seemed to involve some labyrinthine procedure through an online application the exact instructions of which I could not understand from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office website. We both knew, however, that even if I did go down to the jail, the visit wouldn’t be in person but over closed circuit video.

Luckily my son did not stay in Tent City. But he did send me the entertaining piece of mail at the top of this post, one of a couple of edifying picture postcards available for purchase. Here’s another one:

My son was also fortunate that his mug shot did not appear on the “playful” “Mugshot of the Day” feature of the MCSO website, a truly awful practice that from 2011 to late 2016 allowed viewers to vote on the most pathetic mugshot of the last 24 hours.

A Sheriff Not Loved by All Arizonans

These are just a few personal reflections on the now discredited sheriff. The Phoenix New Times, among many other news outlets, has documented many of his serious abuses, not the least of which is the racial profiling Arpaio refused to discontinue after being ordered to do so by a federal judge. And let’s get the record straight here. Although Donald Trump may claim, as he did in defense of his recent pardon of Arpaio, that he (the sheriff) “is loved in Arizona,” the estimated 50 percent of us Arizonans who disapproved of the pardon are incensed that he has escaped his day in court.

Once again my inspiration for today’s post is Charli Mill’s Flash Fiction Challenge.

August 17, 2017 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write about an escape artist. It can even be you, the writer, escaping into a different realm or space in imagination. It can be any genre, including BOTS (based on a true story) or fantasy. You can focus on the escape, the twist or the person who is the escape artist.

Escape Artist

Only his hands and eyes existed. And the thin strands. Cross, loop, knot; cross, loop, knot.

He wanted to give her something. The nice gringa teacher. Who looked him in the eye. Who smiled. Who explained in Spanish when he couldn’t understand.

The fat gringo voices around him faded. The rows of bunks. The sweating walls. The smell of urine.

Cross, loop, knot. A cross. A heart. A simple cord necklace.

He fingered his small creation. Thought of his village outside Culiacán. His mother. The smell of tortillas and the simmering pot of frijoles.

He could taste them now.

Goop? Riding the “All Natural” Gravy Train

July 31, 2017 ~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 8 Comments

Dr. Jen Gunter is my new hero. She shines a crystalline light on the current crop of snake oil sales(wo)men like Gwyneth Paltrow and her multi-million- dollar GOOP women’s lifestyle brand.

Full transparency here. I have spent $30 on a bottle of sulfate-free shampoo with “emollient-rich Red Sea kelp.” I have been swayed to spend more on a beauty product if it contains the words “natural,” “organic,” or “botanical” on the label. And (I am ashamed to admit) I have even been persuaded to insert a vaginal egg into my “sacred female space.” Otherwise known as “love eggs,” “jade eggs,” and “yoni eggs,” these pelvic galvinizers purportedly possess the power to help you develop a more loving relationship with your “yoni” (vagina) while powering up your kegel capacities.

Still, it was with a smirking delight that I saw the recent Stephen Colbert send-up of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Wellness Summit, the tickets to which ranged in price between $500 and $1500.

The Goop Media Wars

And it was with an eager finger that I clicked on an op-ed piece in the New York Times over the weekend by Dr. Gunter, an OB/GYN and pain medicine specialist dedicated to “Wielding the lasso of truth” about dangerous health fads aimed at women. Dr. Gunter has raised the ire and media backlash of Paltrow and her goopy promoters by pointing out the dangerous disinformation her brand peddles to women. Those vaginal eggs, for example, may have a connection to toxic shock syndrome because superatigens are reintroduced vaginally with air during jade egg insertion .

It would seem that women are especially vulnerable to the false promise of advertising. Not that I haven’t lived with a “metrosexual” man who spent far more that I ever did on spas and gels and oils, even hair implants. But I’m sure his excesses pale in comparison to what the average woman spends in the $20 billion dollar hair and nail industry. And this newer focus on “pure” and “natural” products only opens the door to more price gouging.

No Face Goop Can Turn Back Time

Why are we so vulnerable to the cons? Why do we suppress our common sense that tells us, no, there is no such thing as an “anti-aging” agent; no, you may be super fit and you may look great for your age but you are aging nonetheless; no, that hair color looks great but it does not take ten years off your face. The bloom of my fertile years is fading. The maiden and mother phases are behind me. I can get rather wistful about it sometimes. But what I want is not eternal youth. What I want is to be a healthy, beautiful, and even desirable crone, one whose age makes her less, not more, susceptible to advertising claims that manipulate my valid concerns about environmental toxins.

The women who attend Goop summits are no doubt younger that I am. And they must have a lot more disposable income than I do. I guess they don’t blink at spending $60 on a .17 ounce compact of “Multipurpose Balm (packed with carrot seed, Marula oil, and Jojoba seed oil.”) They must really buy the hype that it will do more “to moisturize dry lips and to smooth out the wrinkle-prone areas around the mouth and eyes” than, say, my $2 tube of Nivea kissable lip moisturizer or my extravagant purchase of $12 emu oil eye cream.

But the issue is not money. Given Paltrow’s outsized influence, her lack of expertise, and her underlying profit motive, I’m thankful that professionals like Dr. Gunter are (wo)manning the watchtowers and making us think more carefully about our healthcare and beauty consumption. And while I certainly look for alternatives to products that use toxins or test on animals, I think I’ll stick with my $10 Sprouts tub of coconut oil and vials of herbal essences, even if I do splurge on that shampoo.

Crystalline lake waves washing over rocks

Today’s post was inspired by Charli Mills’s flash fiction challenge for July 27, 2017 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story using the word crystalline.

My Crystalline Complexion

The sales associate was all of 20.

“I just want some eye cream,” I said.

“I have the perfect product for you,” she enthused. “The Gone in 60 Seconds Instant Wrinkle Eraser.”

“C’mon, nothing is going to erase my wrinkles,” I said.

“This one will. With all-natural sodium silicate, it instantly erases fine lines and wrinkles. It’ll provide that little bit of a ‘lift’ you need. ”

“Hmmm” I said, my skepticism deepening the frown between my eyebrows.

“Really, I use both the eye and the face cream in the line. I’ve been told I have a crystalline complexion.”

American Pie-Not Enough to Go Around

July 25, 2017 ~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 12 Comments

“Make the pie higher.” So said our illustrious 41st president George Bush. The line resurfaced in my head this week when thinking of two recent exchanges: the flash fiction prompt of “pie” from Charli Mills at Carrot Ranch, and a conversation I had with my conservative sister-the-sister.

These days of course, so many of us political lefties look back fondly on “W.” Ten years ago, we thought the right could do no worse damage than it had under the Bush-Cheney regime—the phony war in Iraq; the torture memos that justified waterboarding; the no-bid contracts with Halliburton and Blackwater; the assaults against the separation of Church and State and the pandering to the detestable Tea Party; the false commitment to “family values”; and the highly dubious oil ties with Saudi Arabia, to name just a few crimes.

And though Bush may have mangled our language, his idiomatic sins were far less sinister than those committed by our current Obfuscator-in-Chief, with his accusations of “fake news,” his protestations of “witch hunts,” his propensity to defame anyone who crosses him with his crass labels (Crooked Hillary, Lying Ted, Little Marco) and his obscene pronouncements regarding women. My gorge rises as I type.

Being thus consumed by my abhorrence of the man now degrading the highest office of our land, I cannot take off my political “pussy hat,” when sitting down to write or when talking to those of my dear ones who voted for the cad.

Religion and Politics in America

I have written here before of my twin sister, the Franciscan nun, and her (to my eye) confoundingly conservative views. “Yeah, yeah, she’s a one-issue voter,” an acquaintance reminded me last week. “It’s all about abortion.” Okay, yes, I understand the social issues over the last twenty years or so that have led my sister to take as her political guide either the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh or the Catholic journals she reads. And though neither Republican nor religious, I too resonate with the bootstrapping values of individual endeavor, responsibility, and hard work that the Republicans have laid claim too. I too agree there should be limits to government control of individual lives. But such fallback justifications for the current administration’s efforts to, for example, axe healthcare for millions and cut Medicare and Medicaid, are just scum on the surface of a very deep pond.

Certainly the GOP with its merciless promotion of free-market capitalism, its climate-change deniers, its trickle-down economy enthusiasts and deregulation champions (except when it comes to women’s bodies) embody as a group the very antithesis of the Christian message they so publicly embrace. So when it comes to understanding my sister, to maintaining the closeness we have always felt, I am abjectly lost. For I can’t help but feel that the actions and values my sister now defends couldn’t be farther from the teachings of the founder of her order, Saint Francis. Here was an intentionally impoverished man, a man now named the patron saint of ecology, a man who “really believed what Jesus said: ‘Announce the kingdom! Possess no gold or silver or copper in your purses, no traveling bag, no sandals, no staff’ (Luke 9:1-3).”

A Bigger Piece of the Pie for Some

The sister and I spoke over the weekend. Though we try to stay away from the political, it is nearly impossible not to drift in that direction. She bluntly stated that she believed capitalism was good. That, although she finds our swaggering, mendacious leader detestable, he is moving our country in the right direction. After all, she pointed out, the stock markets are way up. When I objected that not all people benefited from the bull market (and that at any rate bull markets have a dismaying habit of falling), she fell back on the old sad premise that “the poor will always be with us.” By that measure, those who get a bigger piece of the pie leave just a few crumbs for the rest.

As we “speak,” my sister is settling into a three-week visit with her German counterparts for a big council meeting. I wish her well in Germany. She admitted feeling a tad anxious. Our rather virulent strain of capitalism does not apparently go down well with her German sisters. Nor has our president endeared himself to their people. One of these sisters apparently slapped a nun visiting from my sister’s convent some years back. But I do relish the idea of my sister’s exposure to a fresh, European perspective. And I wonder how she will defend her American heartland politics in the face of what may well be a passionate call to support the American left in its struggle against those very positions.

And now, the flash:

American Pie

“Nothing more American than apple pie,” she said.

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s lots of things.”

“Okay, sure, there’s baseball and Mom, too.”

“That’s not what I was thinking about.”

“What then?”

“Oh, oppression of the poor, Wall Street fat cats, imperialism, misogyny, institutionalized sexism and racism, homelessness, addiction, environmental destruction…”

“God, you’re so negative.”

“No, just realistic.”

“I still think it’s a land of opportunity for all.”

“No, you think it’s a zero-sum game. Not enough pie for everyone; some must go without.”

“I never said that.”

“No? Then what’s with ‘the poor will always be with us’?”

Beacon of Hope in Troubled Times

July 9, 2017July 9, 2017 ~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 16 Comments

Image of beacon of light from the starry sky — Photo by Nate Bittinger

When will the aliens come to rescue humanity? How will the revolution start? Why don’t those few leaders with a moral compass stand up to speak truth to illegitimate power? Where is that flashing beacon of hope?

The Beacon that is Literature

I see little on the horizon to answer these questions. So, I turn to literature. And having neglected some literary landmarks over the years, I dove into Ursula Le Guin’s 1974 “ambigous utopia,” The Dispossessed. A tale of two worlds cut off from each other by centuries of distrust—the larger planet, Urras, resembling earth with its wars and extreme inequality between rich and poor; and the other, Anarres, a bleak and impoverished moon settled by utopian anarchists—it is a timely story, indeed.

Told through the philosophical voice of Shevek, a physicist from the moon who endeavors to reunite the worlds, it is impossible not to apply its lessons to the current state of affairs in the world. The riots that took place in Hamburg during the G20 summit this last week (anarchist driven perhaps, but also the expression of ordinary people looking for their own beacon of hope) aptly illustrates the anger and frustration.

Freedom and Responsibility

I’ve only just begun the book, but a passage struck me last night, compelling me to ponder the relationship between “order” and “orders,” between freedom and responsibility. The scene involves an argument the young Shevek has with a friend (Tirin) over the reasons why no one from the moon has visited the mother planet, Urras. “We are forbidden,” Tirin, says. To which Shevek replies:

Forbidden? . . . Who forbids? . . . Order is not ‘orders.’ We don’t leave Anarres because we are Anarres. Being Tirin, you can’t leave Tirin’s skin. You might like to try being somebody else to see what it’s like, but you can’t. But are you kept from it by force? What force? What laws, government, police? None. Simply our own being, our nature as Odonians, responsible to one another. And that responsibility is our freedom. To avoid it would be to lose our freedom. Would you really like to live in a society where you have no freedom, no choice, only the false option of obedience to the law, or disobedience followed by punishment? Would you really want to go live in a prison?

Certainly the book strikes a chord with me now. I still suffer a deep distress and pervasive melancholy over the election results of last year. And the ongoing assaults to our collective sanity and well-being from the current administration only amplify those feelings. Like others, I threatened (however hollowly) to move to Canada once the “Orange Menace” took office. But echoing Shevek above, I am America. I might like to see what it is like to be Canadian, but I can’t, really. The laws of either country notwithstanding, America is the skin I wear, no matter how deplorable I find nationalism.

Our Responsibility to Others is Our Freedom

Sadly, as Samuel Johnson said in 1775, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” My deeper distress comes not from the fact that such an unabashed scoundrel operates in the world, but that so many of my fellow Americans voted for him. Sure, his followers saw him as the law-and-order candidate. The candidate who would protect our freedoms. But “order” in this case comes down to “orders.” And what a slew of executive orders we have seen. I don’t believe those “patriots” most given to “bullhorning” our freedom—those for example, who flaunt giant flags on their pickup trucks—take freedom to be the same thing I do…or patriotism for that matter.

Not that they don’t make a connection between freedom and responsibility. Not that we don’t have to fight for our freedom godammit. But what that brand of American seems to care about most is the infringement of their particular freedoms: to own assault weapons; to remove regulations that interfere with their own financial gain; to use the excuse of “religious freedom” to deny services to groups of “others”; to secure their own piece of the pie even if it means others get none. It’s a freedom enforced by law, not one defined by our responsibility to each other.

Freedom or the Totalitarian State?

These themes are nothing new of course. In thinking about all this, I pulled from the shelf Erich Fromm’s psychoanalytical classic Escape From Freedom. From the back cover of my husband’s 1967 Avon edition:

If man cannot live with freedom, he will probably turn fascist. . . Using the fundamentals of psychoanalysis as probing agents, Dr. Fromm reveals the illness of contemporary civilization as seen by its willingness to submit to totalitarian rule. While the rise of democracy set certain men free in a political sense, it has simultaneously given birth to a society in which the individual feels isolated, dehumanized, and alienated. This situation has frequently resulted in blind devotion to a Leader, abject submission to an all-powerful State, and barbarous politics of aggression and mass murder.

Is this where we are in the United States at this moment? On the brink of fascism? Or have I overindulged in “fake news” put out by the “false media”? Considering that de-legitimization and restraint of the press is a common tool of despots, (witness the now closed White House press conferences), I don’t think I am overreacting.

So, I look for a beacon of hope. While our would-be fuhrer tweets his messianic diatribes to the angry dispossessed, I throw my lot in with the thinkers: with the writers and artists and filmmakers and educators who keep the intellectual flame alive. At least we are not burning books…yet.

As for beacons, thanks to Charli Mills and Carrot Ranch for provoking these thoughts with her prompt of beacon for this week’s flash fiction challenge.

Beacon

I search the night sky. As if the answer were there. As if science fiction were true and benevolent aliens could save us. Why bother? I see nothing. The stars are snuffed out.

Here below flames rip at cars and barricades and shop fronts—bonfires of fury and pain. The undercurrent of violence deafens me, pulls me down on streets wet from water cannons. My hands bleed from the bricks I have thrown.

You pull my arm. You scream. The maelstrom snatches your words and eats them.

But I follow at last—you—a brighter beacon than the flames.

Felons: Free but Still Shut Out

December 9, 2016December 9, 2016 ~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 6 Comments

Felon. A word whose meaning seems so at odds with its sound. That soft fricative “f.” That sonic resonance with other lovely “f” words: feline, female, fellow. That rhyme with “melon.” A word whose first use was recorded in the 14th century to denote one who commits “an act on the part of a feudal vassal involving forfeiture of his fee.” Like “villain,” (one from a village), the word has evolved over time in meaning from a marker of societal status relative to a powerful authority to one denoting criminal activity and immorality. Though the original meaning of “felon” (feudal vassal) has gone the way of the feudal societies to which it was attached, the sense of forfeiture has survived.

I have spent a lot of time wrapping my head around the word “felon” this last year. Knowing a young felon intimately who was convicted of a non-violent crime, agreed to a plea bargain, did 8 months in a state minimum security prison, and was released in May, I’ve taken an interest in this growing segment of our population and of the post-incarceration fetters imposed on them by our criminal justice system.

First off, what numbers are we talking about here? As of 2014, around 24 million people in the US (close to 10 percent of the adult population) had a felony conviction. This number is not surprising when we consider the fact that the US locks people up at a higher rate than any other country on earth. Our prison population weighs in at 716 per 100,000 people. Alarming when you consider that more than half of the 222 countries with prison populations tracked in one study record a rate of 150 per 100,000 people.

There are many implications of this state of affairs, not the least of which is the very disturbing evidence for racial bias in incarceration rates and the clear connection to political delegitimization of people of color. (Note that state laws barring people with felony convictions from voting date to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Southern lawmakers worked to neutralize the black electorate.)

But here I’d like to simply address the effects on felons AFTER they have served their sentence. In fact, I wonder why they are still labeled “felon” at all once they have paid their debt to society. As noted in a New York Times editorial in May of 2016, the very “vocabulary of incarceration — the permanently stigmatizing way we speak about people who have served time — presents a significant barrier to reintegration.” On top of this psychological barrier—and the many typical challenges felons face, such as limited family support, a spotty work record, low level of education, outstanding fines, and substance abuse and mental health issues—ex-offenders (note that “ex”) face myriad legal restrictions as well. Among many others, these include:

Restrictions on housing (most apartments, especially corporate owned, will not rent to felons);
Ineligibility for financial aid;
Difficulty finding a job;
Ineligibility for some professional licenses;
Ineligibility to enlist in the armed forces; and
Loss of voting rights

That last restriction alone has received much attention this election year. Consider that in 2016, state laws barred nearly 6 million Americans with criminal convictions from voting in the presidential election. About 4.4 million of those are people who are not in prison but were still denied the right to vote. And if you home in on the rate by state alone, the percentage can be even more alarming. For example, a whopping ten percent of Florida adults can’t vote due to felonies.

So, why does this situation continue when a national survey shows that most Americans think that people who have committed felonies and served their time should be able to vote? I have no answer to that question, but I suspect it has something to do with politics, economics, and a judicial system geared towards punishment rather than rehabilitation.

Certainly there are bad, dangerous, and, arguably, irredeemable people in this world. But too many times we think in black and white about convicts; we fail to distinguish among them; we have no time to consider narratives of how each ended up behind bars. The system is complicated. Just the other night, a friend of mine pointed out what “animals” so many of the incarcerated are. Perhaps this is true. But perhaps our “correctional” facilities have some hand in completing the transformation of a human being into an animal unfit for society.

I don’t think I am naive about the criminal mind or about evil, but I do believe real rehabilitation must be an option for the many non-violent prisoners crammed into our often for-profit facilities. And I believe those felons who have paid their debt and make real efforts to rejoin society as productive citizens should be given a better chance.

Witnessing the obstacles my own young felon faces has certainly raised my awareness of this issue. But Charli Mills’s recent flash fiction challenge prompted me to write about it now. The prompt happened to coincide with a visit I made to accompany my felon to a residential drug and alcohol rehab center last week. Waiting in the dawn cold with a few other early comers hoping to get one of the limited beds that day, I listened to a couple of middle-aged individuals talk about their addictions and about the cascading legal problems and social isolation that has resulted.

Here is that December 2, 2016 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story about something or someone not allowed. Maybe it’s about gender, race or other intolerance. Maybe it’s the cat who paws at the door, but not allowed inside. Maybe it’s a trail where dogs are not allowed. Go light, go dark, go where the prompt leads you.

Closed Doors

Her name is Karen. She stands outside in the dawn cold hugging a drab olive overcoat around her. “I’ve got to get this bed,” she said.

“What will you do if you can’t get in today?” I asked. “No family to stay with?”

“They gave up on me. My sister helped, but I burned her out too. Too many relapses.”

“That’s rough,” I said.

“I’m not a bum,” she said. “I’ve got a degree. Got a job with Easter Seals this year. But when the background check came back, they let me go.”

She shook her head. “No felons.”

Female Misogyny: Trump’s Women Voters

October 12, 2016October 12, 2016 ~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 14 Comments

I want to talk about misogyny. Not your default, patronizing, overtly sexist misogyny of the Mad Men male. Not even your blatant, boorish, intimidating misogyny of the sort we have seen gorilla knuckling around media platforms this last year and a half. No, I am talking about female misogyny: the mistrust, denigration, and fear of women—especially powerful women—by other women.

Female misogyny elbowed its crude way into my head during the primary season, when (like Stephen Colbert, I gag to say his name) Donald Trump let loose the first of his galling attacks on “the fairer sex.” We know the litany of those attacks like Catholics know their prayers: Megyn Kelly and Carly Fiorina, Rosie O’Donnell and Ariana Huffington, the beauty queen Alicia Machado. Fat. Pig. Slob. Dog. Disgusting animal. And then, the gloriously transparent and full-frontal video that ankled its way out of its cement footbath last week to resurface in the Washington Post. As each of these reality TV/Howard Stern episodes revealed its tawdry head on national television, there sat at the rallies, behind Il Duce II, the exuberant, waving, white women.

What are these women thinking? I ask myself. How can they, in the 21st century, support an ape like Donald Trump? How can they laugh and jeer at his comments about women’s menstrual periods and dogfaces and piggy bodies? How can they ignore that video in which he crows about kissing women without their consent, grabbing them by the pussy, and appropriating them for his use like some disposable object?

I have come to the conclusion that such female Trump supporters—palpitating to the image of a strongman, in the grip of their hope for a Messiah (always male) to redeem us of our presumed collapse into liberal perfidy, so hopelessly indoctrinated by our patriarchal culture—such women automatically display a deep and innate suspicion of powerful women who dare to demand rights for other women. Such women have a deep-seated misogyny against their own sex.

No, you might argue, it is just a clash between conservative values and liberal values. Some of these women might have supported Carly Fiorina after all. Except that Carly Fiorina—offering equally feeble qualifications for the top office in the land as her main rival—was easily and early on swept away by Trump, despite the backlash for denigrating her looks on national television.

The most disturbing and startling manifestation of female misogyny shouted out to me from my Facebook page yesterday. It was an echo of the mob mentality Trump’s followers have displayed when calling for Hillary Clinton’s arrest over the supposed criminality of deleting those emails. And it came from my twin sister, a Franciscan nun. My sister had shared a clip showing the moment Donald Trump, during the second town-hall style presidential debate, growled at Hillary, “You’d be in jail.” A friend of my sister’s replied to the post, saying that she’d stood up and cheered when Trump threatened Hillary with imprisonment. My sister “liked” the reply and agreed that she had cheered too.

We are talking about a Catholic nun, folks. What does it take for a nun to support a man whom the Pope himself declared not a Christian? An adulterous husband with children from three different women? A man who perpetrated a dangerous and defamatory lie about our president’s birth? A self-proclaimed billionaire who has swindled contractors and workers, has lost several fortunes on bad business deals, and almost certainly has not paid federal income taxes for twenty years? A xenophobic man who identifies with Vladimir Putin and vows to build a wall on the Mexican border to keep out those “Mexican rapists and murderers”? A man who defames a whole group of human beings based on their religion? A civilian who never served in the military and yet denigrates Senator McCain for having survived a brutal internment as a Vietnam POW? A 69-year-old braggart, narcissist, creep who has said he would date his own “hot” daughter if he were not related to her? And finally, a lascivious predator who, at the age of 59, was recorded boasting about hitting on a married woman and forcing himself on other women, about impulsively kissing them and grabbing them by the pussy?

What kind of Bizarro world have we entered?

I realize that conservatives like my sister vote Republican because they fear a liberal shift in the makeup of the Supreme Court. That they deplore abortion and gay marriage and fear that our country is going the way of Sodom and Gomorrah. That they equate patriotism with our military might, respect for law and order, and the national myths perpetrated through John Wayne movies. (Don’t you just love the scene in The Quiet Man, when John Wayne drags Maureen O’Hara, tripping and falling, from the train station down to the village?) Conservatives are afraid, very afraid. They sense the coming loss of demographic power based on membership in their shared white, European, Christian heritage, part of which is the comforting image of the strong, protective male leader. And the only way to make sense of the ever more rapidly changing landscape is to see others’ rights and freedoms as a direct violation of their own, especially in the religious arena.

I don’t dismiss their concerns about fiscal responsibility, conflict of interest regarding the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, jobs, and what they see as an erosion of their way of life. I respect their convictions if not their beliefs. But I do not understand how they can subvert those convictions in this election year by supporting an absolutely reprehensible man transparently gaming the political system for his own ego and gain. The only sense I can make of it is that, “something [else] is going on here.”

And that something else is good old Christian Patriarchy. My sister and I were raised in a Roman Catholic family with a strong male presence. My mother was not submissive, and I think she chafed under the assumptions of the day, that the man wore the pants. Still, I am pretty sure she laughed when Jackie Gleason threatened to knock his wife’s head off. My father was old-school working class dominant. After him came two older brothers, then an older sister, and finally my sister-the-sister and me. We youngest siblings were both primed for patriarchy (as was our older sister, now a retired CEO and happily married lesbian). But somehow the changes of the 60s and 70s swept the older sister and me left of center, while my twin entrenched herself on the right and, under the influence of Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and that ilk, drifter further and further in that direction.

My sister lives in a system where men are fathers and women are sisters. A system founded on a core virtue of obedience to male authority. A system that recognizes only two sacramental roles for women: the Convent or marriage. Either way the woman is subservient to the man. The man knows best. I am exceedingly close to my twin, but I know that in questions of judgment she will always defer not to my incredibly smart, compassionate, and wise sister (and God knows not to me, an early defector from the Church) but to my brothers. Just as my father could not be faulted, my brothers are the embodiment of good and right for her. That they are Christians enhances their claim to wisdom, but I have to conclude that their gender does as well. They are voting for Trump, one—the businessman and family patriarch—just to shake things up in Washington; the other—ex cop and Fox News devotee, because he has drunk the Kool-Aid of vitriol against “Crooked Hillary” and would, at any rate, never depart from the GOP ticket.

Sure, I have questions about Hillary. But her history, policies, and keen intelligence far outweigh my concerns about her relationship with Wall Street or deleted emails or for God’s sake her husband’s infidelities. And the sheer revulsion her opponent’s sexism, racism, xenophobia, arrogance, mendacity, and general thuggery generate in me makes me all the more ready to combat the misogyny directed at her by males and females alike.

Though Madeleine Albright suffered a backlash from younger women for her Second Wave feminist inspired comments in support of Hillary’s candidacy, I do think “there is a special place in hell for women” who follow the male misogynist’s dirty political playbook this election season. And after the spectacle last Sunday of the apoplectic, predatory Trump snorting and hovering and glowering around his opponent, I do ask women who gleefully and unconscionably cheer his threats to jail Hillary this one question: “Have you no shame?”

Flash Fiction: Rebellion

January 11, 2016 ~ Jeanne Lombardo ~ 13 Comments

Rebellion: 1) opposition to one in authority or dominance; 2) open, armed, and usually unsuccessful defiance of or resistance to an established government

I am inspired to write my first blog of the year by the January 6 flash fiction challenge from Charli Mills at Carrot Ranch, which references, as a starting point, the occupation by an armed group in Oregon of a federal wildlife preserve, in protest over the government’s imprisonment of two local ranchers.

To provide perspective on this event, Charli gives us both a personal history of the kind of people who make their living off the land—and who often find themselves front line in the battle over use and control of resources—as well as an impassioned appeal to try to understand the intersection of power, control of resources, individual rights, and our duties as members of a democracy.

Most of us can surely sympathize with cases of justified dissent and protest, of instances of the provoked little guy finally standing up to the big bully. Indeed, I resonate with stories of farmers and ranchers standing up to the government’s overreach, tracing my own paternal roots back a hundred and twenty years or so to a farm cut from the open prairies of a remote stretch of North Dakota (how much of that state is not remote?) And like all Americans, and perhaps especially those who’ve grown up in a Western state like Arizona (in my case) or Idaho (where Charli lives and writes), I have also gotten drunk on the lore of the staunch, independent pioneers, ranchers, and cowboys who risked all to stake a claim to open space, land, and greater self-determination.

Ahh the passions such a train of thought can dredge up!

But I am no believer in the free rein of passions without the restraint of reason. Passion is the voice not only of rightful advocates of good causes but of mobs, fascists, and demagogues.

Which brings us to the current climate in the United States and the underlying issue of guns. Forgive the overt sexism, but any group of men wielding AK-47s is apt to make me piss my pants. I am one who shudders at violence as a response to conflict and to the vitriol, distortion, and irrationality of the debate surrounding the Second Amendment’s presumed guarantee that every American has the constitutional right to arm themselves to the teeth with high-powered automatic, military-grade weapons. So while I may find it edifying to hear the stories of the half-frozen men—now appealing for deliveries of vittles via the United States Post Office (a public service of the Federal Government)—their wielding such weapons makes them immediately suspect in my eyes. As does the recent evidence (the arrival Saturday of a similar group calling themselves the Pacific Patriots Network) that their example sends a clarion call to others whose main objective may not simply be solidarity with a cause but an opportunity to engage in rabble-rousing and mayhem.

In short, I realize it’s a complicated issue, but I do not support insurgency or outbreaks of seditious activities by any group. And I’d like someone to explain to me the justice in one group forcefully claiming 187,000 acres of federal land on behalf of the county in which it is situated. Last time I checked, we are supposed to be a government “of the people, for the people, and by the people,” and that land has been set aside and protected since 1908, for all Americans. Again, I admit there are issues here that I do not understand. I am willing to be enlightened.

For now, I prefer to hold faith with a central government that, imperfect organ as it is, strives to balance the rights of all Americans and the competing interests of states, special interest groups, and individuals. And when that faith is tested, I turn first towards educating myself on the various angles of the issue being contested. In the case of Oregon, I first try to understand why the government owns so much land in the first place.

So many angles of this issue compete for our hearts and minds. That’s why I applaud Charli for honing in on this theme for the prompt this week on rebellion. Her appeal at the end makes it a particularly thought-provoking challenge.” As she notes: “Perhaps little story-rebellions from marginalized communities around the globe can teach us to better appreciate one another’s struggles. But how do we stand up to the powers that be? How do we take control of our lives and livelihoods without becoming what we struggle against?”

January 6, 2015 prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less) write a rebellion. Is it one a character fights for or is it one another suppresses? Explore what makes a rebellion, pros or cons. Use past or current rebellions as inspiration or make up one of your own.

And here’s my flash, inspired by reports on just one of the groups roused to anger by the events in Oregon.

Crack Shots

In the spring they came. From Florida and Minnesota, New York and Texas. A great gentle army streaming from the four corners of a common patrimony—the land. Along the Pacific Flyway they massed, their pickets like pistons, rising and falling with their footfalls. The first yellow warbler flashing topaz against the sky heralded their arrival.

Sharp angles marked the buildings of the Malheur Wildlife Preserve. Sunlight glinted off gun barrels from beyond the entrance. The marchers halted. They readied their arms. Focused their targets in their sites. And let loose a volley of shutter-clicks.

The Birders had returned.

Jeanne Belisle Lombardo

Committed to Craft; Serious About Story

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