FILM: Cruella

Cruella is as wicked fun as it looks, and Emma Stone is delightfully wicked in bringing to life this re-envisioned classic Disney villain. Evil characters are so much more interesting than good ones, and especially when writers dream up intriguing back stories where people aren’t quite as black-and-white as a 1961 Disney film may have made them out to be. Especially when they are foiled against an even more evil villain in Emma Thompson’s fantastically wicked baroness, who imperiously rules over a London fashion empire, whom a young Cruella aspires to be like and eventually take down. Using the cut-throat high fashion industry as the set is brilliant for this story, and comparisons to The Devil Wears Prada are apt, especially since this film was co-written by the same writer. Emma Thompson’s baroness makes even Meryl Streep’s fashion queen seem warm. The 1980s London punk aesthetic is the perfect look for the young upstart designer, with a gothy parade of fantastic costumes, and there’s just something about London that makes for charming thieves and grifters, with fun heisty bits like at times like a lighter version of Ocean’s Eight. The twisted plot has enough twists to keep this villainous prequel intriguing to the end, with some nice puzzle pieces falling into place to set up the classic Disney film.

FILM: Los Hermanos

If you like modern Cuban classical music, or if you just enjoy a good uplifting story, you should see Los Hermanos (The Brothers), a documentary about two Cuban brothers, both extraordinary musicians, one a violinist who made his life in the US and the other a composer and pianist who made his life in Cuba. After decades of limited contact, the two finally got the opportunity to make music together in a joyful reunion. Through some improbably obtained archival footage, we get glimpses of their childhood in Havana, their musical education, and their father who is a notable Cuban composer and conductor. The film beautifully presents Cuban life in all its contradictions, the joy and the privations, the cultural richness and the bureaucracy. But the heart of the story is the music and the passion for making it, and the music these brothers are making is vibrant and riveting. There are some great scenes that really give insight into how musicians talk to each other as they are bringing a piece of music to life. There is a joy in life that they exude in their music, and they wear their hearts on their sleeves, on their strings, and in their scores. We came away from this film smiling, humming, and filled with their contagious joy. We were lucky to attend the film premiere in Santa Monica, where we could enjoy this music-filled film in full theater sound, and afterward there was a Q&A with the filmmakers Ken Schneider and Marcia Jarmel hosted by NPR arts journalist Mandelit Del Barco. (Ken is an old high school friend, and I couldn’t be more proud to know Ken and Marcia after seeing this fantastic work!)

FILM: Limbo

From the trailer, we expected Limbo would be more funny and more uplifting than it was. What we found instead was a more thoughtful and existential reflection on the experience of refugees in the limbo of awaiting adjudication of their status. The story centers on Omar, a young Syrian man from a lineage of famous musicians, who carries his “oud” (a lute-like instrument) with him everywhere he goes, but never plays it. He lives with several other would-be immigrants from various places on a remote windswept Scottish island, where they are not allowed to work, and must simply wait for months or perhaps years for their status to be resolved. They are met with varying reactions from the locals, ranging from true sympathy and kindness to suspicion and outright racism. A class meant to teach them about British culture provides some of the lighter moments. The real humanity is revealed slowly as we get glimpses of these characters, their paths to this place, their motivations, and their precarious hopes. The film crafts a sense of the absurdist suspense of these refugees trying to hold on to hope in this limbo of unknown duration and outcome, where peers are sometimes taken away with no explanation, and the rest remain like the characters in Waiting For Godot. The setting of the remote barren island perfectly enhances the bleakness. An improbable looking phonebooth in the middle of nowhere provides occasional communication with distant families, unless they want to hike up to the top of the local hilltop which is the one spot on the whole island with cellular reception. Omar walks through this life in a sort of jet-lagged daze, like Bill Murray in “Lost in Translation”. He wistfully remembers the apricots from his family’s fruit trees, and the sweets his grandmother made from them. There’s a Syrian expression — “tomorrow there will be apricots” — meant to offer hope when things look bleak. He never heard the expression growing up, because, he confesses, “there were always apricots.” A cast on his hand has kept him from playing his oud, but when the cast is removed, it turns out there’s an emotional cast on his spirit which is really what keeps him from playing his music again. He needs to rediscover the slender thread of hope that has lead him this far. The end is neither a Hollywood ending nor a French ending, but it is a thing of quiet beauty. While this was not what we expected, I was glad I saw it.

ART: Amy Sherald and Lygia Pape at Hauser & Wirth

I celebrated my second Moderna shot on Friday by making my first visit to an art gallery in over a year. At Hauser & Wirth in DTLA Arts District, they have a showing of the portrait artist Amy Sherald, who was boosted into national prominence a few years ago with her commissioned official portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama. This show of five of her recent works is called The Great American Fact. Her distinctive style is a simplified realism, working in bold colors and clean simple shapes, reminiscent of Henri Rousseau, but focused on portraits of African-Americans in an idealized and iconographic visualization. Her works are striking, and not just because of their bold colors and monumental scale (approaching life size). It is her depiction of African-Americans at leisure inhabiting clothes, spaces, poses, and symbols that are traditionally white cultural property. The juxtaposition made me catch my breath and wonder: this is something I haven’t seen before, but why should it be so unexpected? The settings and symbols are classic Americana: Norman Rockwell-esque white picket fences and yellow clapboard houses, sunflowers, 1950s classic bicycles and cars, a James Dean style denim jacket, a Barbie pink outfit, a pink flamingo, a composition that calls to mind American Gothic. The relaxed poses have a natural feel that just adds to the subversiveness. And in another element of her signature style, skin tones are all rendered in grisaille, literally taking away the color of the skin, and creating an intriguing contrast with the strong colors used everywhere else. The picture of the surfers on the beach was particularly striking to me in the context of the recently resurfaced story of Bruce’s Beach, a thriving Black-owned beach resort in Manhattan Beach in the 1910s/1920s, one of the few places in southern California where Blacks could enjoy the beach at that time, which was run out of town with government sanction in a shameful example of racial injustice. Sherald says she paints the world she wants to see. Her scenes, including her beach, feel more like New England (it’s that Norman Rockwell vibe), and she may draw more positive inspiration from Martha’s Vineyard, which (unexpectedly to those unfamiliar with the history) does have a better example in Oak Bluffs, a town where African-Americans have historically owned, lived, and vacationed. Wherever their inspiration, I found her portraits visually appealing and thought-provoking.


They also had another exhibition, of the Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, which I was more mixed about. In one darkened gallery was a lone engaging abstract work called “Ttéia 1, C”, a composition of “silver thread, wood, nails, and light”. The silver threads are arranged in parallel floor-to-ceiling lines to create two diagonal columns that intersect each other. In the dark gallery, they are invisible except as spotlights catch them, so you only get glimpses of the overall form at any one time, and the visible portion shifts dynamically as you walk around it. It’s a beautiful visual, and it invites (or perhaps even compels) your interaction by walking all around it and raising and lowering your perspective to see how it changes. In the second gallery, there were a series of works all on the theme of the Tupinambá, an indigenous people of Brazil reputed to have been cannibals. The Tupinambá are represented in her work by red feathers, and the art pieces mostly comprised large balls covered mostly or entirely in red feathers. In some instances, there were single red-feathered balls with random body parts sticking out – a foot, a hand, or breasts – in poses that seemed not to be appendages of the spheres, but as remnants of what the people-eating spheres had consumed. A large installation comprised a large number of these spheres all together on top of a large tarp, with bits of bones sticking out of them. There were also a few spheres under the tarp, and those spheres were only partly or barely covered in red feathers, and otherwise dark. If you looked closer at the dark spheres under the tarp, they were covered with cockroaches, I suppose suggesting that the vibrant red cannibals were themselves ultimately going to become eaten by bugs. Interesting in concept, if not so visually appealing.

Fortunately, I didn’t view them in that order, the cannibals consumed by roaches weren’t the last thing I saw, and my appetite was intact to wander over to Salt & Straw to experience a different kind of art. At those masters of ice cream, I ventured to try a flavor made from Oregon Bartlett pears with blue cheese. It was excellent. The pear flavor really came through in the ice cream, with goodly sized chunks of pear in it, and occasional small bits of blue cheese, just enough for accent but not overpowering the more subtle pear flavor.

FILM: 2021 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

For many years now, we have enjoyed a secret: the pleasure of viewing the Oscar-nominated short films. Last night we viewed the 2020 crop of animated short films. The joy of a mini-festival of short films is that you can experience such a range, from pure light-hearted comedy in one moment to wistful, mysterious, or deeply moving in another. Burrow started us off with a warm smile, a charming story of a small rabbit armed with a shovel and a hand-drawn plan for its dream home, running into all sorts of unexpected neighbors also living beneath the earth. We were then jolted into the acid trip dreamscape of Genius Loci, which starts off as meditative poetry and morphs into a psychotic break. Emotionally it is unsettling, with people and recognizable elements of urban life morphing into a very subjective first-person experience of mental illness. Artistically, it may have been the most beautiful and intriguing, alternating fluidly between fully colored-in watercolor-like scenes and abstract partial sketches. Opera was one long pan down a vast pyramid, a fantastical cross between Hieronymous Bosch and Rube Goldberg, with hundreds of figures moving through bizarre rituals in different chambers of the pyramid, with some great Sisyphean battle at its base between fire and cold. If Anything Happens I Love You was a beautiful and poignant story without words, in which we are shown the rift between a husband and wife, the two fleshed out characters avoiding each other in silent tension while shadow figures above them express emotions and flickers of memories. As the shape of the hole in their hearts is slowly revealed, it does not just tug at our heartstrings, but shoots our heart like a bullet. Mercifully this was followed by another light-hearted entry, Yes-People, in which vividly humorous claymation-style people inhabiting the same apartment building go through their day saying only “yes” (or its Icelandic equivalent) with various amusing expressions and intonations. The presentation also included three films that had been short-listed but didn’t get nominated. Kapaemahu enacts the legend of four “mahu” (third-gender persons) who came from Tahiti to Hawaii in ancient times and were great healers, ultimately transferring their healing powers to four great rocks before disappearing. The animation is beautifully done in warm tones and the figures reminiscent of cave pictograms, and the story behind it is fascinating. The actual rocks can be seen in Waikiki, and the legend is a documented oral tradition that is narrated in this film in the Niihau dialect of Hawaiian (the only continuously spoken form of Hawaiian and probably closest to what would have been spoken in the time of the healers). The Snail and The Whale is an animated version of a children’s book, a lovely story narrated in verse by Diana Rigg, with character voices by Sally Hawkins and Rob Brydon, with delightful seascape imagery, like a shorter version of Finding Nemo. Finally, To: Gerard is another charming story, this one about a would-be magician working in a mail room, his childhood inspiration for magic tricks, and how he passes on the legacy. 

SCREEN: The Queen's Gambit

The Queen’s Gambit (a 7-episode limited series on Netflix) is an enthralling look at the sometimes fuzzy line between genius and demons, in this story about an orphan girl who becomes a world-class chess prodigy during the 1960s. A series of other chess champions are the nominal antagonists, but the real antagonist is the protagonist herself and her self-destructive impulses rooted in her troubled childhood. Anya Taylor-Joy’s brilliant performance brings Beth Harmon to life, conveying her guarded character as much with looks and movement and tone as words. (I first became acquainted with Taylor-Joy last year in her charming performance in Emma.) The American 1950s/1960s are vividly rendered in costume, color, sets, style, and speech, which really enhances the production. There’s a Cold War undercurrent throughout, with the Soviets being the chess world superpower of that time period, and the US State Department and various organizations interested in helping Beth succeed as a show of American superiority. And yet that whole trope is a clever contrast to an underlying theme of the limits of individualism: Beth can succeed if only she can find people who will support her and if she can learn to trust them. Like a great chess game, I really wanted to see how this story played out, and like a great chess game, I could watch it all over again right now to see how the early moves built to the ending.

STAGE: Matthew Bourne's Romeo & Juliet

George and I went to the ballet tonight, thanks to Center Theatre Group's Digital Stage program. Matthew Bourne’s choreography never fails to be breathtaking, and when combined with a creative reimagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet set to Prokofiev’s dramatic score, the result is riveting. Two very talented and very young dancers, Cordelia Braithwaite and Paris Fitzpatrick, bring to life the star-crossed lovers. Their dance duets are charged with passion and energy, with effortless gravity-defying moves that make you wonder whether there aren’t hidden strings. Their fluidity is amazing, and in one remarkable scene they carry off their pas de deux in a prolonged lip-locked kiss. The tale is made contemporary, and reset in some kind of mental institution with an abusive guard, and it is a darker more twisted version of the classic tragedy. But the beauty of the music and the movement captivates with hope for the young lovers right up to their doomed end.

Christen Lost Too Soon

Today I mourn the loss of Christen Smith Herman, who was a good friend through junior high and high school. We bonded in French class, and in high school, I remember a tree well where Christen, Pat Ruffino, and I would always meet at recess and lunch, more comfortable being with each other than at any of the more popular lunch tables. She was a vegetarian and into yoga decades before those were as cool and widespread as they are now. I think her fandom of George Harrison may have lead her to Ram Dass and Paramahansa Yogananda, her love of music flowing naturally into an Indian spirituality that I think she came to authentically and just found herself in tune with. I remember her carrying around “Be Here Now”, and her teaching me how to draw an “om” (which we used to decorate our yellow Pee-Chee folders that were ubiquitous in our day). I remember that she would always look carefully before sitting down at the tree well because she valued life, even insects, and didn’t want to accidentally squash any ants. She had a brilliant smile and wore it often. She played guitar and had a beautiful mezzo-soprano voice. Her voice and passion for music would become a career, singing in the St. John’s Cathedral Choir, and joining a trio called Voxfire who sang medieval music (Hildegard of Bingen!). We lost touch after high school but loosely reconnected about 20 years ago. I probably saw her a half-dozen times, a few times intentionally, and a few times just bumping into each other (which happens more often around Los Angeles than one might expect). We once literally bumped into each other at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, as we were both looking up in amazement at its awesome heights. And thanks to social media, we were able to keep a sense of what each other was up to. I got to know her first and second husbands and watch her two kids grow up through her posts (though I did get to meet all of them in real life at least once). I’d been enjoying her artistic eye capturing the beauty of the San Juan Islands, where she had moved a few years ago. I had been planning to visit her last July on the way to an Alaska cruise, but Covid canceled those plans. And now we may reschedule that trip next year, but she won’t be there to visit. It’s hard to believe she’s gone so suddenly and too soon. My heart goes out to Paul, Kaija, Peter, and Martin. Their loss is unfathomable, but I’m glad her husband and children had the opportunity to bring her home and be with her as she passed.

Christmas Shadow

In a normal year, the shadow of my mother’s death would have cast a pall, her absence keenly felt at this first Christmas without her. Yet damned Covid robs us even of normal grief. How can you miss someone around the family Christmas dinner table when we’re all dining alone? How can you see a shadow when everything is already dark? I thought of that most exquisite expression of grief, W. H. Auden’s poem “Stop All The Clocks”. But what would Auden say now?

Close the restaurants and theatres, shut down the world.
Let the forests of a nation burn blazing red,
Smoke blackening the sky declaring She Is Dead.
Put cloth masks round the mouths and noses of the public doves,
Let the ICU nurses wear N-95s and latex gloves.

Done and done. What could Auden say now, when all the clocks are already stopped? How could one ask the whole world to grieve one loss when two million families had a newly empty seat at their virtual Christmas tables tonite? How could our cries of grief be heard when two million families are wailing? And yet we cry. Though the sun be dismantled and the world is dark, we still perceive the shadow of her loss. Though the world mourns two million other losses, the whole world laments her end, for to us she was the world.

FILM: OutFest 2020

Last night we saw a movie on a big screen! We went to Calamigos Ranch in Malibu, which is hosting some weekend drive-in movie screenings as part of the OutFest 2020 film festival. It felt so good to get out to the movies again! We had a double-feature of Boys Shorts and Cicada. In the short films, I think my favorite shorts were See You Soon, about a long distance romance, and Last Summer With Uncle Ira, about a teen boy going off to summer camp and saying goodbye to his uncle who is dying of AIDS. Most of the offerings managed to tell engaging stories in just 10 or 15 minutes, ranging from a trans gay couple negotiating an open relationship to a black gay man unexpectedly outed in the middle of a rap battle and a romance between two differently challenged boys that takes place on a swing set. The feature film, Cicada, portrays a lovely romance that develops between two men in New York as they work their way toward healing each other’s troubled pasts. The drive-in thing worked fairly well, with only a minimum of people struggling to figure out how to keep their radios on without running down their batteries or flashing their car lights. We packed up some sandwiches from Langer’s Deli to eat in the car before the film, and we got there early to have a bit of time to explore the ranch too, which is a lovely place that does some cool things with lighting in their trees. We enjoyed it so much we booked another one for next weekend.

In the meantime, the bulk of OutFest is offered on streaming. After some fumbling with the technology (and sadly, ultimately failing to get it to work on our TV or my iPad, and resorting to watching on my computer), I enjoyed a couple of films this afternoon. The standout was one called Cowboys, set in gorgeous northwestern Montana, about a young boy trapped in a girls body and trapped by his mother’s expectations, who tries to run away with his sympathetic but troubled father. A gripping story, beautifully acted, and beautifully shot.

Seeing so many good films at the OutFest festival this year. Having it on streaming video means I’ve been able to see more films that I normally would. And they’re doing their best to recreate the festival experience. Every film has an intro, and is followed by a Zoom-taped Q&A with the writers, directors, and actors. Here are my highlights and capsule reviews.

P.S. Burn This Letter Please – a fascinating documentary that discovers nearly-lost history of drag queen life in 1950s New York. For so many queer men of that generation, if they even kept diaries or letters, they were often destroyed by scandalized families after their death. As one historian said, looking to reconstruct gay life of that era, the only records we have are arrest records. But in 2014, a whole trove of letters and photos were found in a storage locker, shedding light on that milieu. Using that as a starting point, documentarians tracked down surviving members of that clandestine social circle to find out more. This film intersperses contemporary interviews with those now in their 80s and 90s with period photos, film clips, and readings of those delightfully dishy letters to paint a vivid and poignant picture of those lives.

Three Chords and a Lie – the film follows out gay country music artist Brandon Stansell as he returns to his hometown outside Chattanooga to perform, not knowing whether any of his estranged Bible Belt family will attend. His songs draw powerfully on his experience growing up in the country and reconciling that with a gay identity. Like a good CW song, this film tugs on your heartstrings while telling its story with a good tune.

The Teacher – the film set in Taiwan in recent years investigates that nation’s struggle to acceptance of gay equality through the story of a young idealistic high school Civics teacher who becomes romantically involved with another man whose situation is much less idealistic. Their Facebook relationship status is definitely “it’s complicated”, and the complications spill over to threaten the teacher’s job.

Shiva Baby – this dark comedy has a tangential lesbian element but is thoroughly Jewish, and brings a Woody Allen like incisive lens to skewer Jewish family dynamics in 2020 (if I may bring up the great filmmaker with dubious morals). Danielle is not thrilled to be dragged by her parents to the shiva (funeral reception) of someone she barely remembers, where she’ll be grilled by everyone about her prospects for post-college employment (murky) and prospects for marriage (complicated), and her parents will work the room on her unwanted behalf. But things just go down from there for Danielle when her lesbian ex and her current sugar daddy both unexpectedly turn up. The twisted comedy is rich, and is only enhanced by tight camerawork to emphasize the “I gotta get out of here” feeling, and a sometimes screechy violin score that underscores the humorous horror.

Show Me Yours – a pilot for a potential episodic series, explores the life of a young black pastor and his white wife as he tiptoes into his gay sexuality and they tentatively explore an open marriage, a secret they’re not yet ready to confess to the congregation. It’s clever, cute, and funny, as they both go on awkward first dates and compare notes afterwards. The humor is warm and humane, allowing their conservative upbringing to create a humorous situation where the laughs are not at anyone’s expense.

Monsoon – the film follows Vietnamese-born Kit (played by the dreamy Henry Golding), who’s grown up in England and is returning to Saigon for the first time since his family fled 30 years ago. He brings his mother’s ashes, in quest to find the right spot to spread them, as well as to figure out what connection he has (or doesn’t) to his native country. He visits cousins, searches for old family homes, and has a hook-up with an American ex-pat that turns into more, while seeking some resolution. The film is beautifully shot, with many long shots (even drone shots) of Kit amidst Saigon and Hanoi scenery, and shots through windows and mirrors, visually posing the question of how Kit connects here and exposing his reflective state of mind.

The Obituary of Tunde Johnson – the film would have been interesting enough if it merely followed the rich private high school love triangle of sulkily charming Tunde (only child of wealthy erudite Nigerian parents), all-American jock Soren (whose father is a right-wing populist talk show host who doesn’t pay enough attention to his son), and beautiful blonde Marlee, who’s Tunde’s longtime bestie and Soren’s girlfriend. But all of that is stunningly and explosively juxtaposed with police violence in a way that looks ripped from today’s headlines. It adds a layer of sadness to realize that this was actually written a few years ago. The brilliant way the film is put together is in turns heart-racing, heart-stopping, and heart-breaking.

Breaking Fast – there was a void in the film world for stories of gay Arab Muslims who want to sincerely reconcile their faith and family values with their West Hollywood lifestyle, so into that breach, writer-director Mike Mosallam brings us Breaking Fast, an utterly charming Ramadan-themed rom-com. Mo, a young doctor, faces lonely iftars (the fast-breaking suppers during Ramadan) this year, since his ex-boyfriend broke up with him a year ago rather than come out to his family. But when he meets the handsome and intriguing Kal, everything could change, if Kal’s baggage and Mo’s sometimes overzealous idealism don’t get in the way. Not only a nice window into Muslim culture, but a very satisfying rom-com.

Minyan – a sweet story about a young gay man in a Russian Jewish immigrant community in 1980s Brighton Beach (New York), who with the gentle influence of his beloved grandfather, as well as a couple of elderly neighbors, comes to terms with his place in his faith and his community, at the same time as he is discovering James Baldwin and Greenwich Village. The period and cultural context feel very authentic, as are the accents. (“DOHvid, read the TOYrah, all the answers are in the book!”) A “minyan” is the quorum of ten good Jewish men required by tradition to perform the most sacred prayers and rituals, and David is needed to make the tenth in his neighborhood shul. But in a larger sense Minyan represents the importance of community, and acceptance because we need one another.

Two Eyes, the closing film of OutFest, was an extraordinarily beautiful and powerful film about crossing gender boundaries, weaving together three different stories spanning Montana 1870 to Barstow 1980 to Wyoming 2020. Each story would stand on its own, but the way they are interwoven and the unexpected threads that tie them together make the whole much more than the sum of the parts. The performances are all strong, the music that is both within and underscoring the film adds its own layer, and the magnificent scenic backdrop of the American West so aptly signifies boundless frontier.

BOOKS: The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion is known for her keen sense of observation and a journalistic style that lays things bare through meticulous description. When her husband of nearly four decades died quite suddenly during the holidays of 2003, she applied that sense of observation to her own grief over the year that followed. In so doing, her book The Year of Magical Thinking manages to be utterly subjective and utterly objective at the same time by describing such a personal experience in such a detached and yet immersive way. She makes no effort to play violins nor conjure sympathy. The camera rolls documentary style with no need of musical score to tug your heartstrings as the events and the experiences speak for themselves. She opens a window to her own mind as dates and places trigger unexpected cascades of associations, as she finds herself unable to part with certain things (her husband’s shoes or his alarm clock), and as she relentlessly rehashes how and when he died – what was the exact moment? what was the precise cause? – looking for an elusive crack in the inevitability. As the calendar inexorably moves forward, each day brings memories of what she and John were doing on that day the year before, until she comes to the day when the year ago did not contain John. It is a remarkably candid portrait of grief and loss, and of the life and marriage that was lost, as well as a warning reminder that everything can change in an instant.

The Singular They

Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2019 was “they”, as a pronoun for a person of nonbinary gender. For me, it’s only recently, well into 2020, that I’ve noticed it cropping up. I first noticed it reading a Washington Post story last week, and a few days ago it caught my ear for the first time on a This American Life podcast. I have to admit that I found it a bit jarring, but it wasn’t the gender that threw me so much as the number. The stories were talking about a specific person, so when the pronoun “they” was used, I was momentarily confused. Who all were “they”? Admittedly, nonbinary persons are unfamiliar ground for me, but I’m sympathetic and have no objection to the concept. As a cisgender gay man, I’m quite comfortable with “he”, and also comfortable with a camp “she” to playfully refer to cis males. But even gender-bending depends on a binary view of gender, so for those who feel themselves alienated by the whole binary construct, I can see why they would want to distance themselves from “him” or “her”. The only admittedly very small taste I’ve had of the experience of being misgendered was trying to pick out a song for my wedding that wasn’t singing about “him and her”. (We chose “I’ll Cover You” from “Rent”.) So I understand why a nonbinary person would want to use “they”. It’s the grammar I’m struggling with. This is a singular “they”, so should we be saying “they is”? (That sounds wrong on multiple levels.) Happily for grammar pedants like me, Merriam-Webster had a very helpful article on this very issue. They noted that the pronoun “you” was once exclusively plural (with “thou” being the second person singular), but has evolved to serve as singular or plural, so that today we don’t think twice about speaking or hearing “you are” with one person in mind. Even though “are” is technically the plural form of the verb, there you are, dear singular reader, that doesn’t hurt at all, does it? Though “they” isn’t quite there yet, there’s no reason it can’t be. Moreover, it’s been heading in that direction for centuries. Even before Shakespeare, “they are” has filled in for non-specific singular referents. For example, “no one is truly free if they are imprisoned by their grammar”. The “they” in that sentence is perfectly singular, and the “are” is perfectly natural. It’s not jarring in this context to map “they are” onto “no one is”. The same thing works for singular corporate referents, as in “Apple is working on a new iPhone, which they are planning to roll out in September.” Interesting side note: my Irish friends use plural verbs with corporate entities, as in “Google are launching a new smartphone”. That was jarring to me when I first heard it, but I eventually got used to it, and now sometimes I even say it myself. Language evolves to meet our lived experiences. We can learn and adapt (even an old grammar pedant like me). I’ll experience some discomfort with the “misnumberedness” of the singular “they”, but my discomfort will be a small act of solidarity with those who feel profoundly misgendered by “he” and “she”.

July 4th, 2020

In recent years, I’ve felt increasingly dissonant about Independence Day. I still hold to idealistic beliefs about the principles this country was founded on, and the patriotic songs and symbols still have power to stir me, even as my realizations of the ways in which this country falls short of its ideals deepen each year. This year especially has brought new understanding of the way that racism carved channels in our history that still affect our present. It has been a year of national reflection and reckoning, perhaps because we have all been quarantined with more time to reflect, leading to an extraordinary pulling down of monuments and symbols once considered venerable, and the consideration of ideas formerly inconceivable. As I put up the flag tomorrow, how can I help but think about the reference to slaves in the less-than-admirable third verse of The Star Spangled Banner or the odious racism of its author, but also of the redeeming fifth verse added during the Civil War. It is fitting that the anthem should be considered amendable like our Constitution, a work in progress like our country itself. Our founders recognized their principles as aspirational when they sought to form a “more perfect union”. And as our country was nearly torn apart, Lincoln, standing among the fresh graves of Gettysburg, called upon us “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced,” and that this nation “shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Seven score and seventeen years later, we still have much unfinished work. It can be discouraging to assess how far we yet fall short of our stated ideals. But it’s worth looking back to see how far we’ve come, and it’s worth looking around to see where we are relative to the rest of the world. As I put the flag up tomorrow, I’ll be thinking of Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” and of all the recent protests. But I’ll also be thinking about living in a country where we can have such protests, and where monuments can sometimes be toppled, even as citizens of Hong Kong are losing their freedoms before our eyes, as Uyghurs suffer cultural genocide in China, and as much of the world suffers under dictatorships, oligarchies, and theocracies. It may be tattered, but the banner yet waves.

My Father's Son

My father’s desk is covered in piles of paper, but he knows where everything is. I smile when I see that, because my desk is the same way, and I know where I got it from. (Our spouses do not smile at what they unjustly perceive as a horrendous mess.) My father is one of those rare people who gets pleasure in putting numbers into the right boxes, so it totally made sense for him to take up being a tax preparer and enrolled agent as a part-time gig to keep himself busy after retirement. I inherited that too – you can look at my Quicken and find every expense categorized and even see how much cash is in my wallet. I hope I’ve inherited so much more of him, because over the years, my admiration for my father has only grown. In his long career at TRW, he started as an engineer, but moved into business development and found a niche in being TRW’s point man with the business they did with Japan. In the 1970s when Japan was still a fairly new and mysterious place to do business, Dad’s ability to listen and learn, and his sensitivity to differences in culture and communication earned him much respect on both sides of the Pacific. When I was a kid, he would share stories about his dealings that were exotic and sometimes funny; only much later would I come to realize the communications skills that he had been gently teaching in those stories. Initially as a side gig, he become involved with the TRW Credit Union, serving on the board and eventually becoming chairman. He has continued in that role long after his retirement from TRW, where he has overseen their growth through several mergers to where the credit union (now called Unify FCU) is now a top 100 national credit union with 245,000 members and $3 billion in assets. Over Sunday night dinners, he has shared many stories about decisions the board has made, stories which share a consistent thread of concern for the members’ best interests, of care for their employees being treated well, of extraordinary actions the credit union has taken in response to local disasters to help out their stakeholders, and of negotiating challenges to everyone’s best interest. He won particular regard for negotiating their first merger, between two equal sized credit unions, with many thorny issues around leadership, organization, and even the name of the merged entity, and finding a solution that everyone was happy with. So many times I just thought I was hearing an interesting story over family dinner, when really I was getting a business school education, and life lessons in successful win-win negotiation. As he closes in on 90, Dad has had the mixed blessing of his own longevity and good health surpassing most of his dearest friends. In that time, I have seen him be an exemplary friend when his friends became incapacitated, with countless faithful visits to nursing care facilities, being there for his friends and their families in their most challenging times. And as Mom struggles with Parkinsons, he has shown himself a great caregiver, helping her to do the things she is still able to do, and picking up where she no longer can. I am so lucky and so grateful to be my father’s son, and to continue to learn from him.

Kindred, we now meet to worship, reaching out through screen and phone

We’ve been regularly attending Glendale City Church via a YouTube livestream since the pandemic shutdown began in March, and meeting up after church via Zoom instead of potlucks. It’s definitely not the same, though our church has done a fantastic job of making it work, and keeping it as normal as it can be given the circumstances. At the same time, I think it has given all of us a sudden new perspective on how much we had been taking for granted in our lives, and a sharpened sense of gratitude for our church family and the opportunities we have to share the trials and challenges of this strange new life. As I heard a familiar hymn being sung this morning, I realized with a jolt and a delighted laugh that some clever person had updated the lyrics for this moment. To the tune of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, updated words by Thom Snell, you can enjoy it here:

(1) Kindred, we now meet to worship, reaching out through screen and phone.
Though we dwell in isolation, we know we are not alone.
Worshipping beyond our building, far apart, yet face to face,
We’re united as one Body, bound by Christ’s redeeming grace.

(2) Siblings, share a song of gladness, praising God and spreading cheer,
So that in these days of sadness we won’t be consumed by fear.
In this time of mass confusion, sickness, loss, and overwhelm,
Let’s encourage one another, hands not joined, but hearts are held.

(3) Friends, be gentle with each other, there’s so much we’re going through.
May this be a time for healing, holding space for grieving too.
Bodies, minds, and hearts are weary, anguish fills the aching soul,
But by God’s unfailing mercy, broken hearts will be made whole.

Bostock and the Triumph of Textualism

Many people were delighted with the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County finding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian, and transgender people against employment discrimination. A fair number of other people were outraged. Most of those people on either side were focused on the outcome, and took the decision as the Supreme Court’s denunciation of discrimination based on sexual orientation or identity. But that’s not actually what happened. To its credit, the court made no arguments about the morality or injustice of such discrimination. Both dissents, in fact, made clear that their authors welcomed non-discrimination protections. Rather, the entire argument of the opinion and the dissents was focused on the text of the statute and its interpretation, down in the weeds on competing versions of the “textualist” philosophy, replete with extensive dictionary definitions of the word “sex” (as well as some sniping over who had the best claim to the mantle of Saint Antonin, the patron saint of textualism). To be honest, as a matter of law, I think this was a tough call, and both sides had very reasonable arguments. Had Alito found two more votes for his argument, making the decision go the other way, I would not have been outraged. I am encouraged to see that Gorsuch and Roberts are willing to follow principles, even when they may lead to consequences that are highly unpopular with many of their fellow Federalists. And despite the accusations of some, I don’t think that either side was working backwards from a desired outcome, “legislating from the bench”, or “updating” the law to fit modern sensibility.

The crux of the decision was that discrimination based on sexual orientation essentially entails discrimination based on sex. The key test for Gorsuch was to consider an individual case and reason whether an employee with all of the same attributes but a different gender would get fired. Say Mark was a respected employee who was fired after he brought his husband Tim to the company holiday party. If Mark were Mary instead, and Mary showed up to the party with husband Tim, that wouldn’t have been a problem. Mark would not have been fired but for being male rather than female. Therefore sex discrimination, which is prohibited. Alito, on the other hand, thinks that Gorsuch is torturing the text to get this outcome, which everyone agrees would have been a very unexpected outcome for the lawmakers who wrote the law in 1964. (Lots of hermeneutical debate ensues over when it is appropriate for a court to try to discern the “intent” of lawmakers, as opposed to just interpreting the text itself.) For Alito, it’s perfectly clear in plain language that sex discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination are two different concepts, and Congress in 1964 chose to outlaw one and not the other. Ironically, I was inclining to agree with Alito until he brought up an example that I think inadvertently sunk his own argument: miscegenation. Suppose we had an employer who did not discriminate based on race, in that he hired employees of all races and treated them equally. But when one of the Black employees shows up to the holiday party with his white wife, he gets fired. The employer argues that they are not discriminating based on race, they are discriminating against mixed-race marriages, which is a different concept, and not an explicitly prohibited type of discrimination. But is it? Would any court not recognize that as a form of race-based discrimination? Discrimination against race is inherently bound up in discrimination based on mixed-race marriage. Alito attempts to explain why this is not perfectly analogous to the case at hand, but I found it unpersuasive. Homophobia is inextricably bound up with misogyny, and with making people uncomfortable who prefer “men to be men and women to be women”. While Gorsuch would deny on philosophical grounds that we could know the intent of the 1964 Congress, he would probably agree that his conclusion would be unrecognizable to them. Nonetheless, he makes a compelling case for following the plain text of the law even to unanticipated consequences, noting a whole body of prior case law (for example, protecting male victims of sexual harassment) that would be thrown out if they didn’t. In the end, I am encouraged not just by the welcome outcome, but even more by how they got there.

Systemic Racism as a Game of Monopoly

To understand systemic racism, let’s recall the board game Monopoly. We’ll play a game, you and I, but we’ll start it a little differently. You’ll start off with $200 and already owning Baltic (the cheapest property) with a house on it. I’ll start with $1000, and I’ll already own half of the properties on the board, most of them with houses and hotels. Every time I pass “Go”, I collect $200. Whenever you pass “Go”, you collect $130. If I land directly on “Go”, nothing special happens, but if you land on “Go”, you go to jail. If you land on “Free Parking”, you also go to jail (because your car doesn’t fit the profile of the neighborhood). When we land on a “Chance” square, we draw a Chance card. But the Chance cards are divided into black Chance cards and white Chance cards. I draw from the white Chance cards, which mostly comprise good things like getting a bonus or a windfall inheritance. You draw from the black Chance cards, which mostly comprise bad things like fees, fines, and “Go To Jail”. You’ll go to jail a lot. I’ll never go to jail. But we both will roll the same dice, go around the same board, and follow the same rules, and we both have a possibility of winning. That’s fair, right? Ready to play?

The Whiniest Generation

“The wildfire is only 10% contained, and it has jumped the highway causing several new flare-ups, with an increasing number of homes in jeopardy,” reported the Fire Chief. “Well,” replied the County Supervisor, “this firefight has been going on for weeks, and we’re tired of the inconvenience of the highway being closed. Just pack it up, Chief. The fire will burn itself out.”

This is seemingly the attitude of some people, including too many who are in positions of leadership. In Orange County, their County Health Director issued an order mandating masks be worn in offices, businesses, and public places where distancing was not possible. This caused a firestorm in which irate people brought signs to public meetings comparing her to Hitler. She received death threats and no support from the County Supervisors, and was ultimately bullied into resigning. Her successor tried to maintain the common-sense order, but eventually relented. One supervisor demanded, “Are you telling us masks, in your professional opinion, are going to be necessary until the end of time or until there’s a vaccine or what?” Here’s a thought, supervisor: how about we wear masks until there’s no longer an exponential death threat? At the very least, until cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are going steadily down instead of up? Just what do you think has changed that makes masks no longer needed?

I keep thinking about World War II, and “the greatest generation”. Our grandparents made phenomenal sacrifices, not only all of those who volunteered to go off to war, but all of those at home who willingly accepted harsh rationing of everything from gas to sugar, milk, and meat; who rounded up and donated whatever rubber and metal they could spare; who bought war bonds. Housewives left their homes and worked in factories around the clock to do what needed to be done to support the war effort. Their leaders inspired them, encouraged them, and the allied nations pulled together in heroic sacrifice and earned victory. I feel pride and admiration for the greatest generation, but also shudder in embarrassment at the pitiful comparison to the present. At a time when we desperately need an FDR or a Churchill, we have a gaping vacuum of leadership. Never has a President been more unequal to the challenges before us. But even where governors, mayors, and public health officials try to provide some leadership, they face a public with barely one vertebra of our grandparents’ backbone. We are asked to make the supreme sacrifice of staying home and watching TV, and wearing a cloth face-covering when we occasionally venture out. But no, that’s too much to ask. We want a haircut, and that mask is slightly uncomfortable. Can you imagine if our cohort had been the ones to face World War II? We’d be remembered as the whiniest generation. Or more likely, “der weinerlichste Generation”, since we’d all be speaking German.

Where things turned south

When I first saw the security video of Ahmaud Arbery at the construction site, I’ll admit the first thought that flashed across my mind was “uh oh, that looks a little sketchy.” And then I caught myself. First, let’s acknowledge that everyone looks a little sketchy when you see them on a grainy security cam video. And then I remembered, how many times have George and I snooped around a construction site? We see some new construction going up in the neighborhood and we’re curious, so we poke around and take a look. I suppose technically it might be trespassing, but it’s harmless, we’re just looking around. At least it’s harmless for us, because we’re white. Nobody’s going to freak out and call the police, and even if they did, the police would size us up, politely tell us we’re technically trespassing, and send us on our way. But a black man doing the exact same thing? That arouses suspicion and fear. And now he’s dead.

The police came for George Floyd because he had passed a fake $20 bill. When you heard that, did you assume he was a forger? Did it occur to you that he might have received it from somewhere else and just passed it on, not knowing it was counterfeit? It’s not common, but it happens. It’s happened to me. But I’m white, so when it happened to me, the store clerk assumed correctly that I was unaware of the counterfeit. They apologized and handed it back, I apologized and gave them a different bill, and that was that. Unfortunately for George Floyd, he was Black, so the store clerk presumed an intentional crime and called the police, who also presumed his guilt and dangerousness. And now he’s dead. Do you see where these stories turned south? Bad cops are a crucial part of the problem, but the problem is so much bigger than that.

Pathetic Lafayette Square photo op

Trump desecrates St. John's Church

We're reeling from a pandemic and a boiling over of racial injustice, but this malignant narcissist has to make it all about him. He tear-gassed peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square so he could stage a pathetic photo op at historic St. John's Church. What a national disgrace. Or as George Will so eloquently describes him, "this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron."

(Just to be clear: the Bible passage in the photo is my embellishment, and part of my commentary. It was hard to resist, as it was probably the most Photoshop-begging photo since the Queen wore that green dress.)