loveslayers - poem

Loveslayers
by
Michael Maestri

You are a powerful wind,
And you've blown me off my feet.
I praise you, wind.
You're a hungry lion,
And you've devoured me.
I praise you, lion.
You're a raging fire that warms me even at the great distance that I've run away.
You're a crying child and I would comfort you.
You're a many-colored flower that adds loveliness to my world.
I praise you, fire, child and flower.
You're also an endless forest, and I'm lost in you.
And a great teacher who's opened many doors in my mind.
I praise you, forest and teacher.
You are the world itself to me, and without you I fear I cannot be.
You must be a goddess, you dazzle my mind so with love.
Yet do I hate you, with a hate that coldly separates, and burns white hot with vengeance,
Because you do re-mind me.
You remind me of a love too painful to remember,
A love I stole from parents perfect and threw away in the streets of the city,
Disgracing them to death I do imagine.
So surely now must I deserve not love but a far worser fate for treachery.
Thus does my memory of love and betrayal haunt my heart and sear my soul,
Which to cure I put love out of mind entirely, to pursue instead my reason's substitutes --
Which seem so sound and certain -- in secret even from myself.
I do not remember my ancient dream of killing. I move people like pieces,
And I follow a righteous brain.
So do not speak to me of love, and ask me not again why I do hate you so.
I hate you for your lighthearted way, which I will punish into sorrow.
I hate you for your innocence, which I will make my own.
I hate you because I cannot bear to love you, and I will not call your name.
Yet there are quiet moments
When all of this undoes.
And shining through the nightmare
A gentle light appears.
Then meekly do I leave behind
The torment of my making, And praising truth, I take your hand,
And step into forever

miriam - poem

Miriam
by
Michael Maestri

A warm soft voice every Thursday and Saturday. The hint of a German accent.
For years an on-air medium, masseuse and martial arts maven,
A blissninny, I thought, a utopian, an old hippie idealist, a fool in fox clothing,
Head full of mild guesses about whales and males and people and God,
A friend I probably under-rated on account of your pretty face.

Recently I learned a racing cell mitosis is attacking your liver, lungs and brain.
I'm not sure of the protocol at such a time.
I don't want to make more sadness for you,
But I'm pretty sure you won't be harmed by what I say here.
I don't want to be morbid, but I don't want to save my grateful remarks
For a later time that may not come.
I want to thank you for a lesson you taught me.

Sometimes for exercise I write my epitaph.
Here I write ideas about you which I'd publish if that made sense.
I'd say: "I went to a hard school -- I have no pity;
I love the smell of smoke, the rush of blood, the pain and noise of fighting.
They excite me and distract me from my self; this is my curse, my work, my mess.
But there are people, great teachers they are, who,
By their grace and kindly spirit, show how I can live, if so choose.
You, Miriam, are such a person."

I was with you once when you learned you'd been betrayed by friends,
Lied to, the way we all are from time to time.
I saw the flinch in your eyes when you learned they'd been lovers.
You'd thought they'd been honest with you; thought they'd been true.
Almost instantly, in that slim sliver of a second in which we make the world,
You raised your dark eyes and looked up at the sky.
You took a deep breath and exhaled slowly --
So you wouldn't take the hurt deep down inside yourself, you said.

I was awed.
I saw it as instant forgiveness, and done under fire, not as a pose in a pew.
Then you said with a gentle laugh,
"Actually, I'm glad to know that others can be as un-enlightened as me."
Such elementary kindness, such wisdom.

Now, after learning you're ill and that it's possible, if things go badly,
That you may be leaving us,
I listen to Madame Butterfly and try to remember that,
Despite all the drama, the damning and the dread,
We don't really die, we're not really separable,
And no one ever leaves us, because no one of us is ever really here.

We do not live on this battlefield. We live in that perfectly quiet place
Between and behind our conscious thoughts.
And in this holy, real place, dear Miriam,
We are always healthy, always together, and always loved.

Sweet William - short story

Sweet William and the Ryan Girls

While drowning one day, I remembered what a Chinese man, Huang Po, said in 600 BC: "As soon as the mouth is opened, evils spring forth." I'd swallowed a lot of water, and that may have inspired this odd recollection. Beyond this, though, I'm pretty sure Huang Po was referring, not to malodorous or deleterious microorganisms, but to deceptiveness in communications. If he was right, and I think he was, we humans can’t trust ourselves to tell serious stories sincerely. Our words, as a matter of course, of nature, carry elements toxic to the mind, the way software carries viruses that harm the thought process of computers. Being a wannabe preacher at one time, this insight put me out of business. I lost confidence that I knew what to say to help people save themselves.

My drowning took place near the village of Spring Lake in far north Wisconsin on an unusually warm sunny day in October. In a bog the size of a football field, in 4 feet of icy water, 9 of us workers were harvesting cranberries. We manipulated 10 foot long poles attached to wide flat boards to herd floating berries that had been released from parent bushes by a special thrashing machine (that looked like a tiny stern wheel paddler) so they'd float free in the flooded bog. I was an over-weight field hand of 46 at the time. I drank too much. My face was mottled and puffy. My given name was William, but everybody called me Bill. I was working harder than the others that day. I shivered from the sweat that ran from my soaked hair and neck down my front and back into my chest high rubber waders. My hands and legs trembled. I could barely see through the blur.

As I reached out to scoop up a few berries with my hand, to eat them, hoping the perfect sour taste of the berries and the ice cold water would ease the pain in my head and make my legs and arms work better, I stepped off the edge of the bog and into the 10 foot deep drainage ditch that ran around it. Water rushed over the top of my waders filling them almost instantly. Suddenly I weighed 100 pounds more than I'd weighed the moment before, and I began sinking down into the drainage ditch despite my desperate efforts to flail my way out. I wondered, in that odd slow motion way that’s common to people in crisis, why no one was noticing my nearly comic struggle for survival or coming to help me.

Water was beginning to choke me and I started losing consciousness. A mental movie, like ones that ran more or less constantly and almost imperceptibly behind my everyday thinking, began to play right over the top of my drowning scene. I became more aware of this movie than of my real life, and on some level, I didn't seem to care. Even as part of me continued to flap, flounder and grasp fervently for a purchase on the slippery bog bank, another part of me slowed and quieted, feeling a final rest approaching, I suspect.

My mind movie took me out of the bog. Suddenly, I was remembering when I was a little boy. I was called William, and people liked me. I saw myself pushing open the small town ice cream parlor's squeaky front door. The sound of its door bell tinkled in harmony with my pushing. Through the shifting glare on the door's large glass panel, I saw wiry old Margaret Ryan slip into view at the back of the store. I stepped in, walked past the penny candy on my left, and glanced at the old Rockola jukebox at the back. I noticed no one was sitting in any of the six birch stick booths on my right. I headed for the ice cream counter. It was mid-afternoon hot. I was 12.

I'd spent another aimless day at Grandma's. I'd taken the bucket out back, past raspberries and rain barrel, and hand-pumped icy well water for the kitchen. The kitchen was a lean-to added on to make a one room up and one room down into a three room house. The upstairs was eventually divided into two littler rooms, and a lean-to sun porch was added to provide a bit more space and privacy for my grandparents and their 4 daughters. I'd weeded the garden for a few minutes before the mosquitoes drove me back inside. Then I'd sat on the stairs to the bedroom smelling roses through the screen door and reading the Saturday Evening Posts - the cartoons and jokes mostly - that Grandma kept stacked on the open end of each stair. Despite the constant threat of attack by winged and crawly creatures, I'd done my duty, including emptying my slop jar in the gray, slightly listing outhouse that Grandpa had built long ago out between Grandma's hollyhocks and peonies.

I remembered my Grandpa exhaling a pungent white puff of cigar smoke and telling how he'd walk his pig down to the train station each evening to feed it scraps from the dining car on the Minneapolis Star, and how they’d cleaned the silverware on the diner one night, and put the waste from it in the food garbage, and how this killed the pig. I remembered Grandma slapping my face one time because I hit a bird with a stone.

I walked the two dusty blocks from Grandma's at the top of the hill, situated among the Catholic, Lutheran, and Methodist churches, past the Jack pine woods with the collar of ferns at its feet, to Margaret and Lucille's on the hillside, to savor what I missed of the city, the smell of hamburgers and the fresh feel of people who were not my family. I'd been taking this walk as often as I could every summer since I was very little. Now I was almost 5 feet tall, strong, handsome, with sound white teeth - my mother had had a dentist give me special experimental fluoride treatments for my teeth - and brown eyes with long lashes.

Margaret and Lucille Ryan's ice cream parlor lived alone in an old frame store front on Main Street. Margaret and Lucille lived upstairs. Main Street was two blocks long at then. Dickenson's General Store, the old bank building and White's garage shared the hillside part of the street with Margaret and Lucille's. The Standard gas station, bait shop, Stone Lake tavern, and Gross' grocery store clustered at the bottom of the hill alongside Highway 70 and the marsh. Over the years, Mr. Gross laid so many bundles of tied twigs alongside each other in the marsh, making paths he was, the marsh had almost disappeared and become a woods instead.

I walked across the ice cream parlor's faded red and blue paisley linoleum on a slow bee-line for the ice cream. As I approached, Margaret fidgeted a last drag on her Lucky Strike before she exhaled and shrilled amiably, "Well! How are you, William? Up to visit your grandma, are you?" As she spoke her head bobbed slightly, in all directions at once it seemed, and yet she managed to focus her darting blue eyes directly into mine, grinning as she did, and cackling sweetly. "So, William, how's your mother, hmmm?" Margaret asked this as she always did. I had no idea how my mother was. The question bewildered me. "She's fine," I answered as always. And, as always, Margaret accepted my answer without question.

I reviewed the full menu: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, tomato soup, chicken noodle soup, grilled cheese sandwiches, fried egg sandwiches, baked beans, sweet pickles, dill pickles, and potato chips. As always, I found it hard to choose. "Are you going to keep me standing here all day?" Margaret screeched while chuckling. I felt somehow comforted by her question, but I didn't answer. Instead, I glanced at the shiny Rockola again, turned, and wandered over to it. "Well I have dishes to do," Margaret wailed and clucked. "Let me know if you make up your mind."

I studied the juke box selections. I knew my mother was always arguing with her mother, with her daughter, and with her husband, too, my dad; but I had no idea what these arguments were about. Actually, I'd stopped listening to them. I paid attention mostly to my own experiences. I remembered the day when my best friends, Nancy and Cathy, pulled my pants down on the playground at recess. They laughed while doing it. I tried to laugh, too, and pretend it was funny. But it had felt horrible. My parents fought like animals, but I couldn’t imagine what it meant. I loved the cloak room next to my classroom at Our Lady of Peace. It was a dark womb that smelled somewhat of coats and shoes, a quiet private place where I could be alone.

After reading the selections on the Rockola, I picked Elvis Presley's Blue Suede Shoes, Louis Prima and Keely Smith's Hernando's Hideaway, and the Everly Brothers' Do You Want To Dance. This day, though, I decided to save my quarter instead of playing music. I turned away from the jukebox and stepped around the partition to where Margaret was washing dishes. I stood near her saying nothing. I looked at her jet black hair. I didn't guess it was black from dye. She sloshed the dishes and howled happily, "Haven't you figured out what you want yet, William?" Her awful voice pleased me, but I started to feel I might be taking longer to choose than I should. I didn't want to offend Margaret, dear Margaret. I could not imagine her being angry, or throwing things, or trying to strangle anyone. Margaret must have been younger than my Grandma, according to the things I'd heard, but her face was even more wrinkled, and her dresses more faded. "I'll be back in a while," I said in a low voice. "OK," Margaret shrieked warmly as she continued washing dishes.

I walked across dusty unpaved Main street to Dickenson's General Store. As I entered, I met Lucille. She clerked there. She was standing at the magazine stand. Her hair was gray. Her face was smooth and round and her hazel eyes actually twinkled. Compared to Margaret she was big and robust; her voice was slow and soft. And like Margaret, Lucille always smiled. "Well, hello," she said slowly. "Up visiting your grandma?" "Yes," I answered. Also like Margaret, Lucille always seemed peaceful inside. The Ryan girls, as they were called, never seemed to argue meanly or need to be right about things. They didn't seem at all like my parents or any of the other adults I knew. Once I heard Margaret remind my mom of a party she, Margaret and Lucille had gone to years before at the Green Lantern Tavern out by highway 27. A fire had started. The customers pulled the piano into the parking lot and kept dancing while the place burned down.

I browsed magazines at Dickenson's looking for those with drawings of sleek women with great conical breasts, garter belts, and skin tight evening gowns. Such striking women reminded me of my aunt Elaine, my mother's sister. This aunt Elaine had gone to college as a nurse and to war as a captain. After she got back, she told jokes about people's organs slipping out of them and onto the floor during operations, and of having to open plasma cans until their fingers bled. She had married a Southern man, a gnarly top sergeant named Hank. I took it as common knowledge that Southerners were less civil than Northerners, and more violent; indeed, this man my aunt married carried a pistol in his back pocket, and grinned even when there was no obvious reason for it. Hank once told about how he'd hidden inside a dead horse in order to shoot a sniper on a hot hellish island in the South Pacific.

My first exposure to adult sex was seeing Elaine and Hank writhing on the floor in the dark at Grandma's where visitors routinely slept on the living room floor. It was easy to see the living room from the top of the stairs. I watched them carefully, like I was hiding, patiently, intently, inside a dead horse, to get a glimpse of a sniper.

I couldn't linger long by the magazines at Dickenson's or my lustful nature, which I thought well hidden, might be un-secret-ed. So, I went out back and sat in the ice house, a graying wooden shed that held countless four foot cubes of winter ice all buried in ripe sawdust for insulation. It was a cool cloakroom. As I sat on the giant ice cubes, it came to me that, as far as I could tell, my mother had not done any dancing for a long time. It came to me that my father probably hadn't either. My father was always working back in Chicago where we lived, or he was at the corner bar, where he also seemed to live. It occurred to me that my father was incomprehensible to me.

My struggle in the water ended then. My body floated quietly in the flooded bog. Other workers saw what was happening and came to help - in the nick of time.

Monkeyshines
epilogue
Sam called a few days after Ma died. She'd been an extra mom for him since he was five. I hadn't called Sam, because I knew he was already suffering badly. His second marriage had soured two years earlier, and he'd lost two kids as well as a wife. The light went out of Sam's eyes when he lost his place as a dad. His ex-wife remarried to a guy Sam thought abused the kids. Cigarette burns on their arms, he said. He wanted to shoot the guy. My worried counsel was restraint.
Sam medicated himself with cocaine and kept it from me. After a year of this, he called, “You said cocaine was alright, Michael, but it's the worst drug in the world. It's ruined me. I've lost everything.”
“No,” I defended, “I said cocaine itself isn't the problem. It's like that .357 magnum you carry in your car.” Duke had convinced me that guns didn't kill people, people kill people, and I felt that idea applied equally to drugs. “And I said that some people shouldn't do coke, the way some alcoholics shouldn't drink. It's a very personal matter that our drug laws make worse. I never said it was alright.”
Sam sounded desperate, and said his medical license was hanging by a thread. I asked him to consider going to Africa to help build a clinic, and he said, “I'd like to, but it wouldn't fool anybody. They'd know I was just doing it to be accepted.”
So, he entered a drug rehab program for doctors. He called to say, "It's tough here, man; they're forcing me to look at reality. This cocaine's really bad. I think Reagan's policy is right; I mean, this stuff has to be stamped out. It's the worst addiction there is. The top doctor here says if he had to choose, he'd rather his kid use heroin, because cocaine's so much harder to kick." Sam sounded like Winston in 1984, after his head was put in a cage facing rats.
I said, “Yeah, well, whatever they tell you, don't forget you're a doctor, Sam. That's a terrific thing, and your skill will remain. I wish I had your skill, Sam. And don't worry, somehow you'll be able to work again.”
“I don't know,” Sam said, “I might get prosecuted, and I don't know if my insurance will pay for this, and I can't pay my child support.”
“How long will you be in there?”
“They figure two months,” he said.
“Listen,” I said, “After Viet Nam and medical school, you can handle anything, Sam, I'm confident. I'll come down and see you in a month or so.”
Sam's sister, Carole Lee, called a week later to say Sam was dead. He'd looked at reality, then hung himself with his belt. I went to his funeral. I sat on one side of the church; his family and friends sat on the other side. I didn't want to talk to them or even look in their eyes. I felt they were all part of a giant conspiracy that had destroyed Sam.
The priest, who’d never met Sam, said some general things about death, then asked me to speak. A suffocating cloud of judgment hung over the congregation, and I felt like shouting, “You can all go fuck yourselves.” But I saw Sam's nieces and nephews sitting in their pews, kids who'd hear Sam described as a drug abuser, and I felt a personal debt to Sam. I made a long walk up to the pulpit, and with great difficulty said, “It's hard for me to talk about Sam. He was my oldest friend. For 36 years, he never belittled me, and he never turned away from me. He had less bitterness in him than any person I ever knew, and I'm going to miss him. That's all I can say.”
After the service, relieved people thanked me, and said I’d described Sam perfectly. He was odd and a softy, but he'd always accepted us.
“Oh, thank you, Michael,” his mom said, “I'm so glad you could get up and say such good things about Sam. Not everyone has loyal friends for 35 years. You know, when Sam Sr. died, your dad came over to me at the funeral, when nobody was around and put $50 into my hand, and never said a word. That was a lot of money then. Thank you so much, Michael.”
As we were driving to the cemetery, I said, “When we were kids, Sam didn't figure to make elevator operator. He fought in Viet Nam, and became a doctor just to make everybody proud of him. He was Babe Ruth in my eyes, and every time he stitched up a wound in the emergency room, he was hitting a home run. I don't want to hear people write him off as some stupid drug abuser. If Babe Ruth were alive today, he'd be run out of baseball as a drug pig. Sam died of a broken heart. He died when he lost his kids, and we can't be sure who did what to whom, so there's nobody to blame. There was no way to fix it. Sam knew that. I'm angry that he left, but I understand the pain he felt, and I'm not going to second guess him.”
“That's right,” said Carole Lee, “He lost that spark when his kids were taken away. He never really smiled after that. He could have beaten the drug thing, but he didn't have any strength left.”
“The cocaine was just a streetcar,” said his brother-in-law, “If it wasn't that, it would have been something else. Sam wasn't hard enough. He was too gentle, and the road back looked too long.”
I said, “And he thought he'd be prosecuted, and made an example. He was politically isolated and vulnerable. They'd have picked his bones.”
Instant agreement gushed out of everyone.
Later, his mom said, “Oh, Michael, our children are supposed to bury us; we're not supposed to bury them. I feel so guilty. I pushed Sam so hard for material success. I'll never forgive myself.”
“Well, Sam wouldn't want you to feel bad,” I said as I left.
I didn't say that people's fear of drug abuse had been manipulated, and used to authorize a new Inquisition, and that Sam was just one of millions put on the rack. I didn't say that I felt Jonathan Swift was right when he described humans as ‘an odious race of pernicious little vermin,’ scapegoat artists who regularly look at the surrounding population, and think, quite literally, if unconsciously, Who can we slaughter today?
The same people who gave us Viet Nam, and destroyed villages to save them, also gave us Draconian drug policies that were nothing more than rituals of human sacrifice. Sam got too close to the edge. He’d become a tempting target.
And I didn't say that I thought Sam had used up his hardness being a soldier for the same government that later ate him up. He'd told me about a dark night in the jungle when North Vietnamese over-ran his ARVN (South Vietnamese) unit. The ARVN XO(executive officer) shot the ARVN CO (commanding officer). Figuring the ARVN XO must be an infiltrator, Sam shot him. People fired weapons in every direction, and Sam said it was the longest, scariest night of his life.
In medical school, he actually spit blood learning stuff that was over his head. He specialized in emergency room work. He was used to seeing people torn up and bleeding, and he got good at stitching them up.
But he walked right out into the middle of the street when he used cocaine. Harry Anslinger, the Democratic party and Richard Nixon, all cruising the streets in a bullet-proof bus full of well-paid civil-service-protected, ladder-climbing monkeys, put the pedal to the metal when they saw him.
And I didn't say that a worried Sam had called me just before he left for the drug program, (after I'd told him to replace the hardness he used up in Viet Nam by going into human service work and forgetting about profits), and he'd asked me to go to Jamaica with him for a big coke deal.
At eleven, Sam and I had drilled a hole in the wall next to the hot water faucet in Sam's bathtub. We’d stood on tip toes on the basement stairs to peek through that hole at Carole Lee and her friends when they bathed. At fourteen, we decided to get drunk. Mike the Bum got us a pint of Jim Beam, and we sat on Sam's living room floor with two glasses of water for chasers, got drunk, and then sick. (I went home from this event at three in the morning to find Ma sitting at the kitchen table reading a bible. I fell flat on my face at the sight of her, and woke up fully clothed in a tub of cold water.) Sam and I shared a lot of history; when he asked me to do a dope deal, it was a first.
“There's no way I'll get into a dope deal, Sam,” I said. I felt the cold steel jaws of a trap. He had to find someone who'd trust him enough to do a dope deal with him, like an old friend, or he could kiss his kids and medical license good-bye. A better friend than a liar, Sam said, “Did you hear the one about the two guys who were out camping in the wilderness?”
“No, tell it,” I said.
“One of them looks out of the tent and sees a grizzly bear running straight for them, and he says, 'Oh, shit! There's a grizzly coming right this way.' Then he hurries to get his running shoes on.”
“The other guy looks out of the tent, sees the bear, then says, 'What are you doing, man, you can't outrun a grizzly.'
“The first guy, just about finished tying his shoes says, 'I don't have to outrun that grizzly, I just have to outrun you.”
“That's funny, Sam,” I said, “Thanks.”
He was setting me up for a bust. He knew I knew. . .and he knew I instantly forgave him. . .but that didn't free him. . .or me, as I worried that maybe I had contributed to his cocaine problem with some intemperate words.
The guys who ran Sam down in that national security bus might see him again. . .maybe for the first time. . .they had probably thought that they were doing a good and necessary thing when they‘d run Sam down.
Harry Anslinger was an early 20th-century bureaucratic Dr. Frankenstein. Like Dr. Frankenstein, like everybody, Harry wanted to do good. He’d managed Prohibition agents, and when the alcohol Prohibition was repealed, Harry found new jobs for his men by helping to enforce new Prohibition laws against other drugs. In his diary and speeches, he told about the need to protect American youth from the contagious amorality of Negro musicians. He said he'd watched these musicians closely and seen their amorality passed to young Whites by marijuana smoking. Coincidentally, psychiatrists of that time, fully-accredited guys with Pd.D's, were still writing textbooks that said that women who had orgasms (women who enjoyed sex) as ‘depraved.’
It was the Democratic party that first fostered the new drug prohibition.
Richard Nixon was a Cold War politician who served as Vice President and then resigned with a pardon from the new President. In the 60's, he helped confirm a confusing 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt not use drugs, (except as provided in sub-paragraph b, party of the first part, depending on the pharmacological particularities, and how much money you earn, and miscellaneous addenda in the fine print, etc., etc.), because it's a threat to National Security. His rhetoric convinced many citizens that people who used drugs, (other than the ones he used), were depraved dopers who didn't deserve due process of law. Now, when I want to use a drug; I call my lawyer as well as my doctor. Gradually, dopers were made to appear less and less human, and they became a new kind of germ, like "gooks" and "fags," etc.
*****
monkeyshine #22, pseudo-speciation, a precondition for modern cannibalism.
*****
Adam, between Viet Nam and this red herring drug baloney, most American families suffered painful schism which kept their minds off other issues.
I asked Mitch Corey what he thought about this. . .in fact, I asked him if he wanted to help write a book about drug realities. He said, “I can't even talk to you, man, it's too dangerous. I'm being watched all the time.”
Mitch grew up with Sam and me, and I'd always liked him. He was an avid card player/gambler, like me. We'd played countless hours of poker and showdown at his house after school. Mitch became a narcotics agent, and stayed one for fifteen years. During that time, dope dealers changed. They became Narcotics Traffickers. . .more organized, wealthy, and monster-like. . .more like they'd always been officially pictured. Give a dog a bad name?
*****
monkeyshine #2a, the self-fulfilling prophecy; we create a reality that conforms to our expectations and propaganda.
*****
Mitch had been savagely beaten, shot at, and reviled during his years as a narc. . .all that time trying to hide his alcoholism and homosexuality. In a Chicago tavern one night, with only the bartender and himself present, Mitch pointed his pistol at himself and pulled the trigger. He splattered goo on the walls, but didn't die. Doctors put a plate in his head, and the government retired him. Then he got in a legal dispute over his pension. If shot in the line of duty, he'd get $18,000 a year, if he’d shot himself, he'd get $9,000. . .so he claimed the bartender shot him. He was having trouble making this stick the last time I looked. . .most of the customers of that bar were police and they believed the bartender. My heart went out to Mitch, even though he'd ridden with the bad guys by my reckoning. But we’d been like brothers once. . .and still were, despite his actions to the contrary. He made it seem true that we die by the sword we live by, that some hidden psychological mechanism cancels out all our apparent advantages, and makes us equal.]
dry bones (a political appendix)
“Listen,” Doctor, “Everybody I meet is just like me; I.e., a bag of meat full of fishhooks. If you look right, they'll appear to like you, and keep an open mind until they get a fix on you and see where you fit. . .always the hidden cunning. . .eventually they pick a strategy for playing you in their life game. . .maybe as an ally, maybe as a dupe, but either way, the game's so hidden, they aren't really aware of it themselves.
“That's why I'm nomadic. At least, that's the idea I have about it, adding the condition that I don't really know anything, not really, not like I used to think. Reality is a motion picture; human knowledge is a collection of photographs, black-and-white, stop-action.
“Even science depends on interpretations that leave out remote possibilities, and fix on probable realities. Understandable, but blind to idiosyncracies that connect everything. We know that praying to trees is foolish, and we think we're not cannibals just because we don't munch on people's bodies, but only exploit their energy and consume their spirits.
Scientific Knowledge about generic humans is awesome, but about individual humans, it sucks. I think the point in the biblical story about Adam and Eve eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil refers to a tragic flaw in humanity, one described by the Greeks as central; I.e., hubris, an excess of pride and arrogance. Whether from the fruit of a tree, science, a sacred religious vision, political experience, or whatever, when we believe seriously that we're handling KNOWLEDGE, especially knowledge of good and evil, the only serious thing we're doing is strolling onto thin ice.
Anyway, I think I'm nomadic because of this feeling that I've only got a short time before the ax of knowledge falls. I enjoy the honeymoon time in a relationship, the time before I'm known. Once a person knows you, their mind sort of closes, and you and the relationship start to shrivel up. Like the old adage says, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ in the form of pressure to play into subconsciously assigned roles. It might look like anything from bullying on the one hand to invisibly subtle manipulation on the other. Anyway, once I'm known, and before the pressure gets too intense, I move on.
There are exceptions, I mean, there are integrated people who don't squeeze you into their knowledge. . .people who understand that their knowledge is just transitional imagination. . .and I think there are people who offer serial honeymoons, but you need to be away from them for periods of time in order to get to the next honeymoon.
Doctor Gottlieb said, “Have you considered the possibility that your explanations serve to mask your fear of criticism and rejection?”
“Of course.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“How do you dispose of that analysis?”
“I don't. It goes into the maybe file. . .along with malignant suspicions, morbid self-doubts, and all the other possible guilts and fears that clutter the mind. . .and that brings me back to what I was saying about knowledge, I mean, our culture, our history, our very language presses us to see ideas and things intellectually as A OR not-A; they must be true OR false. I feel they are A AND not-A, the yin-yang idea that everything has within itself the seed of its own opposition. It's more accurate, I think. But I don't know. Maybe I'm bullshitting myself. Self-delusions can get pretty complex.”
Gottlieb said, “Well, you came to the clinic to get help clarifying your feelings as the child of an alcoholic. Commonly, such children feel isolated and overly afraid of criticism. You knew that when you came in. We've met eight times, and you've told me a long story about your life, but with all its unusual and interesting details, it still fits easily into the conventional model. As a child of a compulsive personality, doubled in this case, with alcoholism in your father and religious hysteria in your mother, you started early to posture as a victim, and it's continued all your life. You avoid taking responsibility for your problems and look for ways to blame others. If all you want from me is agreement that you were put upon, I can do that now and save you time and money.”
“You mean I set myself up for all the crap I've gone through?! None of the issues has a reality of its own?! I should just stop worrying and learn how to make commitments?!”
“No, I don't mean that. But when you identify with the White Seal, imagine yourself to be a Love Commando, and compare yourself to Shakespeare's Prince Hal, a character who hid his positive qualities; well, I have to suspect you've been functioning as an injustice collector.”
“If I was an injustice collector, does that mean that the injustices I collected weren't really injustices?”
“No, but it might mean that you missed opportunities to create different outcomes for yourself,” said Gottlieb.
I said, “Well, I don't know. Maybe I set myself on fire just to show people I’d been burned. One of my kids told me it had become clear to him that he got in trouble in order to show his anger and frustration. He had an argument with a staff person once, then went out and stole a car. After he'd wrecked the car, he saw the knee-jerk element in what he'd done. He saw it clearly, and it changed his life. But I can't accept that my life's just been one long self-inflicted wound, I mean, that wastes a lot of wonderfully heroic images I've nurtured over the years.”
“Well, let me say again that the hidden agenda, which is likely victimhood in your case, as it often is with the children of psychologically desperate people - which in truth is everyone - but it's a separate issue from the vehicle. Let's say you confront a mugger. He's beating up on someone you think is your mother. The mugger turns and beats you up, and afterward you see that the victim you saved wasn't your mother. You've saved a stranger. How could it matter that coincidentally you're an injustice collector who's predisposed to getting beaten up? One of our trade secrets is that nearly everybody is an injustice collector. We're all victims of victims. Unconsciously, we're all seeking compensation. The process of documenting our injuries, however, does become addictive.”
“Wait a minute; wait a minute. You're taking away my argument. I come to you saying I'm not sure what the hell my motivation has been, or is, and now you say my motivation doesn't really matter.”
Gottlieb shrugged slightly, exhaled audibly, raised his eyes as if looking through the ceiling and toward a distant heaven. He took a deep breath, then continued in a vigorous voice, “Let's not beat this dead horse anymore. Tell me what you did today.”
Monkeyshines
warlife
The City After the War

wind through the open windows
of an empty city bus,
yellowed sheets on sagging lines
brush the tall weeds of silent yards,
skyscrapers drop flakes of rust
over cracked concrete,
doors open and slam
in the dust-filled breeze,
like the broken toy
of an unhappy child. (Robert Tokarsky)



*****
My parallel code is Ansarbak. It is l986, and these notes are for my son, Adam. We were separated by the Cap-Com War. He was caught behind the lines in North America. His mother and I can get out. We have an escape tunnel; an old-fashioned astral projection type that Adam, who is only nine, is not yet able to use.
When we're all together in North America, we must live according to the Cap's anti-Com life program. We must be circumspect and discreet. Informants are everywhere and watch us constantly. Any expression of personal idiosyncrasy can be very dangerous.
Adam may lose some of his ability to be honest and intimate if we don't act soon. He needs to be exposed to vigorous group singing, silence, casual nudity, dancing, elder story-telling and many other human behaviors that are nearly extinguished in North America. Emigration would be a dangerous gamble for us. The Caps and Coms have stretched tentacles to the remotest parts of the planet, and in most places, life is even more desperate and rigid than it is in North America. The best place to hide is here, where we grew up.
While we consider alternatives, one thing we can do is pass along this book of notes. The operating instructions for the old escape tunnel are encoded within the text. It's a Level Three, subliminal cypher that can’t be decoded by any analytical method. The instructions will only be visible the way Adam's magic dagger appeared to his parallel uncle, Terry.
These notes will also function as an anti-toxin for the personal isolation contaminants absorbed through contact with Caps or Coms. Personal isolation is their main control technique. We use it in the parallel worlds, but only as a meditation device. Each reading of the text from beginning to end provides additional innoculation.
*****
The Cap-Com War escalated after the Russian Revolution in 1917. In 1917, the Coms gained control of Russia. Their condemnation of the Cap's plan for global development ceased to be an academic one. The Caps blockaded Russia, and lots of children starved to death. A blood feud commenced. Each side became totally preoccupied with the maintenance of its chain of command and military capacity. Every social, economic and personal issue, however peripheral or irrelevant, henceforth resolved according to its imagined impact on the War.
The Cap-Com War recessed during World War II, 1939-1945. The Caps and Coms became temporary allies to fight the Axis powers, Germany, Japan and Italy. Vast armies were decimated. Whole cities full of people were incinerated. Millions of non-combatant civilians were exterminated.
I grew up in Chicago during the manic period after World War II, during a sliver of time when people thought the world was at peace. Hitler, Tojo and Mussolini had been defeated. Fascism was dead. The tremendous blood sacrifice was seen as the purchase price of peace, freedom and prosperity. The final irony of WW II was a judgment issued at the War Crimes Trials at Nuremburg, Germany. This judgment confirmed that each individual person on the planet was obliged to exercise personal conscience even against the legal demands of the state. Many people reveled in optimistic hopes for the future.
The military vacuum created by the collapse of the Axis armies was invisible to the general public. A renewed Cap-Com War immediately began to fill that vacuum. It was called the Cold War. It was merely an intermission, a period of reorganization during which many people in North America tried to slip their military leash.
The American Cap's dominated the world's economy and held all the atomic bombs. They began to implement a global Pax Americana. The Russian Coms then shocked the world by developing an atomic arsenal of their own. They pursued a Russian kind of justice. The leaders of the world, trapped in a dogmatic mind-lock, committed humanity to a perpetual Cap-Com War.
As of this writing, the last world leaders who knew a world at peace has died. The Cap-Com War has evolved into a bureaucratic process and growth industry. It is the status quo. It may last for the life of the human race. It may destroy the human race. The only way out is through the parallel worlds.
*****
A fantasy of lights and shadows,
Only clear to frozen travelers who haven't been to Jupiter.

I've been there, and I know--
There are no words to penetrate the ice;
The many speakers trying, lying, fail.

A finger points at me and says, "Ha! Now I've got you by the ego
With your icy going and knowing."
That finger is my own.
******
Adam, I am Ansarbak. I address you at the request of your father. I'm his soul, his counselor, and his guide. I showed him how to survive with joy in the love commandos, and I helped him weave truth into the fabric of his personal story. . .so it was incomprehensible to the Herodites. The Herodites will insist that they understand, but they will not.
Your father doesn't have my constant wisdom, but he had memories of events and feelings that he wanted to share with you. He wrote about them as monkeyshines, a hidden agenda of humanity, because that word and concept communicate his feelings about ‘the down-side trash that litters life on Earth, and it's not normative. It lets everyone off the hook.’
I'd tell you clearly about the Caps and Coms, and thereby guide you to the Parallel Worlds, but it would be dangerous for you to possess such writing. The truth still destabilizes humans, and it's considered seditious even to imagine. Peace seekers are still hunted and destroyed.
So, while you've learned something here of your father's mind, don't be deluded. He's still his father's son. He put many important notes on blank sheets which he tucked carefully into his mind. . .some painful things, and some joyful. . .but you now have enough information to protect you during the war years ahead.
The Caps and Coms will rake the world with fire as they always have, and they will be consumed in that fire. You'll be threatened, lied to, and ridiculed, and you'll lose friends to death and madness. You'll see mistakes, and judge them terrible, and a time may come when your heart aches so deeply, you'll fear you can't stand any more. You'll also find love, beauty, insight, and achievement. Strengthened by these, and by what you've read here, you'll survive. You'll go forward, fear no evil, and make a joyful noise.
Don't worry, little Adam, it's only Rock and Roll. ***

Monkeyshines
chapter 20
“Adam, put your hat on your head! Don't just carry it around in your hand,” I said gruffly, as you went out the front door on your way to school. I called after you in a milder tone, “Have a good day.”
“Okay,” you said softly, as you walked on down the gravel driveway.
The tone in your voice said my gruffness hadn't quite ruffled you. The ‘have a good day’ had apparently retrieved the situation, and avoided a bad start to an otherwise innocent day.
I closed the door and said to Chris, “I can't believe my ears when I talk to him like that. I'm the guy who was always going to say positive upbeat things to my kid, like the Mormons in those TV ads of theirs. Jesus!”
“Don't forget your own preaching.” Chris said, “'Talking to kids is like going to bat; sometimes you get a hit; usually you don't.' Don't put unrealistic expectations on yourself.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said wistfully, “But I was talking about disturbed kids. Adam's a pussycat.”
The telephone rang. I answered.
“Hello, Michael?” said my brother, James, from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I’d been expecting a call from him. Ma had flown down there four days earlier for a visit. After she’d arrived, James called to say she didn't feel well. He was supposed to call today to say if she was coming home early. Chris and I hoped she didn't. We lived with her in a two bedroom house, and we'd been getting under each other's feet lately. We needed a break from each other.
“Ma died in her sleep last night,” James said in a flat, tender voice. It was November 8, 1985.
“What! Son of a bitch,” I howled. “God damn it! Shit! God damn it! Isn't life ever going to cooperate?”
“What?” James asked.
“Isn't life ever going to cooperate,” I repeated loudly. “Damn! What happened?” Ma suffered from emphysema and post-surgical depression from a recent operation. I'd told James she should see a doctor about a prescription for an anti-depressant. “Are her physical problems ruining her morale, or is her low morale aggravating her physical problems?” we'd asked each other.
James continued in monotone, “I don't know. I just went in to get her up for her doctor's appointment. Ten minutes ago. She was cold.”
“Son of a bitch!” I said loudly as I paced by the phone. I looked at Chris, and saw curiosity and concern in her eyes. I covered the mouthpiece and said, “My mother died.” Chris' eyes and face went blank.
“I guess I should call the medical examiner, or an ambulance or somebody,” James continued in monotone.
“Aw, shit!” I said angrily.
“There's nothing to get upset about,” James said, “It's over.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, “But I feel terrible that I encouraged her to take the trip down there.”
"She was worn out, Michael. There was nothing you could do about that. It fits that she should come here and die. I've been dealing with death a lot in our Viet Nam Vets group. I'll start doing what I've got to do here. You want to call Peter and Barbara?”
Barbara was the eldest, and lived in Berkeley. Peter was 42, a year younger than Barbara. He lived on a farm in southern Wisconsin.
“Yeah, I'll call them. I'll tell Barbara to call you to divide up the names in Ma's phone book, the white one she kept in her purse. I'll call aunt Gertrude and Richie. I think Mildred's dying the day before Ma left, I think maybe Ma took it as a message.”
“Yeah, I know it was on her mind, but she blue when we got her at the airport. She had no strength at all. She couldn't say a whole sentence.”
“You have things to do,” I said, “I'll talk to you later.”
I dialed Peter. “Hi, Maggie, is Peter there?”
“No. He's out on the route.“ Peter had a cutlery business like my father and grandfather. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Well," I said, my voice starting to labor as emotion piled on, “My mother died.”
“What!” Maggie said, sort of semi-shocked.
“Ma died in her sleep at James' last night,” I said, almost crying.
“Oh, no. Are you alright?”
“Yeah. I'm alright, but I feel like I killed her, sending her to visit James.” Sobbing now, tears ran down my cheeks. I was surprised. I didn't think words from a phone could do this, and I was surprised I'd cry to Maggie. We hadn't been close for years. After Indiana, the family spread out geographically, and feelings hardened. We allowed it, maybe partly, I sometimes think, just to keep any new pogroms from bagging us all at once.
“You did everything you could for her, Michael. The trip was her decision. You didn't kill her.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well, she's at peace now,” Maggie's voice was starting to crack. “I'll tell Peter when he gets home. Let me know what I can do.”
“OK, thanks.” We said good-bye and hung up.
I rang up Barbara. “Ma died last night at James',” I said.
“What?” Barbara gasped in amazement. In a quiet shriek she said, “My mother's dead? Mom's dead?”
“Yeah, and I encouraged her to go.” I was crying again.
“Oh, Michael, don't do that to yourself. You did more for her than any of us, and she was in pain. She's been in so much pain for so long. Ma's at peace now. She could have died at home, too. Oh, my God! Did you tell Peter.”
“He's on the route. I told Maggie.”
“Well, I better call James. Oh, my God.”
“Yeah, I told him you'd call and split up the phone numbers in Ma's book. I'll call Gertrude and Bob, the Hillenbrands, and Richie.”
“When did this happen?”
“James just found her a few minutes ago. She was cold in the bed.”
“Oh, my God; I have to call my kids, and, oh, I'm supposed to work today.” Barbara drove a super modern train for BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. “Are you going to be alright?”
“Yeah, I'm OK.” We said we'd talk later, and hung up.
I turned to Chris, and we hugged.
After you got home from school, Chris and I waited for a quiet moment, then we sat down with you to explain that ‘Gralma’ had died. We said her body had gone back to the earth, but that her spirit would come to visit in our memories. You wrote in your diary the three things you liked most about Gralma. On a separate sheet you wrote the three things you liked least, then you crumpled up the separate sheet, and threw it in the fire. We sat together in front of the fireplace and thought good-byes.
The next ten days made me numb with unending reflections, conversations, and arrangements. I told people my mother died like I was talking about dead fish. She'd been a devout Catholic, so we consulted her priest and learned that cremations were no longer banned. Ma's sister, Mildred, had just been cremated, and Ma put great store by her, so we planned cremation for Ma, too. We scheduled a memorial Mass for the next Saturday. Each ring of the telephone became a dreadful sound, but there was no way out. Each conversation had a part to play in resolving our feelings.
My brain overworked for some days. I wanted to sue the airlines for not warning people with pulmonary disease about the dangers of flying. Ma had turned blue on the plane, and I remembered a TV show about how airlines re-circulate foul air to save fuel. I was convinced that something had happened to Ma on the plane. But it wouldn't wash. You remembered that she looked gray (a sign of hypoxia) when she’d boarded the plane when she was leaving, and the doctor said, “Foul air could make a person sick, but they'd be recoverable. She may have needed oxygen when she got off, but maybe she needed it more as regular therapy.”
“Ma had refused to keep oxygen in the house,” said Barbara, “And she’d told me, after her last trip to Albuquerque, that she'd never fly again, it was so terrible.” Slowly, I accepted the likelihood that Ma was tired of sitting on the sofa wheezing, and that she didn't want to live like that.
My brain ran in new circles hunting the causes of this, the disappointments that had hurt her, from the distant past to recent times. Her mother, Mabel, my grandma, had disappeared into Alzheimer's disease for her last ten years of life, and Ma had taken care of her. Mildred and Ma both were horrified at the prospect of a similar fate. We called it old-timer's disease in the old days.
Also, Ma's kids seemed to be bickering along on separate paths. And Social Security had been sending Ma bureaucratic letters every month that babbled about rule changes, and even accused her of accepting more money than she should have. Each month, they notified her of what she had coming minus what she had to pay back. This was maddening to her.
Her marriage had been very painful, and she'd never quite resolved that.
The state had prosecuted her sons in a way that broke her heart and maybe her health as well.
Another loss tied to an angry priest. Watching the '68 Convention on TV in Ma's basement, this priest said of the demonstrators, “They ought to be taken out and shot.”
Ma said, “My kids could be out in that street!”
This didn't matter to that priest, so she threw him out of the house, and she stopped going to his church. She never replaced religion, and she seemed to miss her involvement with a congregation.
Lots of places to lay blame. . .no one had to bear full responsibility for killing this tired old woman.
After more reflection, I changed my feeling that Ma had been killed by long-term abuse with the sense that time and life overload each of us in turn. Like the guy said, “None of us is going to get out of this alive.”
A dangerous time, friends warned, is after the funeral. . .when the family gathers. Potential heirs are particularly vulnerable then. I heard horror stories of fist fights by the coffin, etc. We were advised to let the dust settle before pursuing questions of wills or property, lest people confuse grief with dollars and bric-a-brac. Our family gathered in peace and harmony.
There was actually a lot of good stuff to remember. Ma was a born social worker always willing to help. If a neighbor family was in crisis, we'd get a new brother or sister. Letters came from people all over the country who loved Ma, and remembered how she'd helped them. Ma was always ready to help, always willing to listen, and always able to talk. Her interpretation of the world was intensely religious. Her unifying principle was to love the children, love all the children. This kept her sane. I actually think she left this Earth to avoid getting senile and causing problems. And, like Mildred, she wanted to leave with a full deck. You can never be sure whom you might run into.

THE END

Monkeyshines
chapter 18
Ethiopia
"Welcome to the Thursday edition of the Answer Back program, I'm Sandy Lyon, and today, I have a new friend in the studio with me. Welcome to the program, Michael."
"Thank you," I mumbled.
"Michael just spent a few days in Ethiopia, and after coming back, he wrote down his feelings for friends who asked what it was like there. So join our circle of friends, and share with us Michael's impressions of Ethiopia. It will change your day."
"It's been two days since I left Ethiopia, and these are my impressions. If you want a good cry, go to Ethiopia. You'll meet a woman there. When you walk out of the hotel Wabe Shabelle (or the Hilton, or the Ghion, or the Afrique) in Addis Ababa, she'll be walking by very slowly. Shaded by twilight, she's a pretty 18 year old suddenly gone 50. She's barefoot. She's dressed in one of those beautiful, white, wrap-around kind of native garments, that has become a filthy rag. Some of the cloth wraps around to secure a baby on her back. The baby is emaciated and motionless. Fresh dark stains mark the fabric just below the baby's seat, probably from the chronic diarrhea that indicates cholera.
“The woman has a radar that picks up your awareness of her. She interrupts her dusty pilgrimage to find out if you're there for her and her baby. I looked into her eyes. Maybe I shouldn't have. I fell into her eyes, down 5,000 feet, crashed and burned. I was smart, tough, healthy, and had a pretty clear conscience. I thought I could look into anyone's eyes. In the brief second that I could look into this woman's eyes, I saw the perfect humility of a gentle woman who didn't know how to demand. I saw the desperation of a mother whose baby was dying on her back. And I saw the forgiveness Jesus gave from the cross.
“She spoke to me in a soft voice, her tone touched with apology for being so forward, ‘Please, Mister, baby hungry. Good baby, Mister, just for baby.’
“Already, I've torn my eyes away. My throat clutches, and I concentrate on stopping tears from forming. I want to hug her, and take her and the baby into the hotel. I could clean them up, feed them, comfort them. I can't. The soldiers would stop me. There are starving, dying people everywhere. They can't all come into the hotel. And they can't be robbed of their last strength by false hopes or sentimental displays. Tears would work on her like raindrops on a flickering candle.
“In America, I would have rushed them to a hospital. Anyone would have. They’d have dropped whatever they were doing and, at least, called an ambulance. Here in Ethiopia, I focus my attention on the first star I can locate in the darkening sky. She lingers. She senses the struggle in me. She whispers her prayer once more, ‘Just for baby.’
“I focus harder on that star, and the woman and her baby disappear from my mind. She drifts away, merging with the stream of wretched people floating by. I tell myself that I had no solution for her. I feel helpless and stupid.
“What this woman needs is rest and nutrition. Then she can return to work in her village that needs a well and a structure for storing grain. She needs the help of the men who are off soldiering. She needs Russia and America to tell the men to stop soldiering and go home. She needs all of us to understand this, and to help however we can.
“Tuesday, on the plane out of Ethiopia, I spoke with Dick Gregory about the nutrition formula he just had tested at a hospital there. Severely malnourished children were gaining weight within two weeks, and were able to start utilizing other kinds of food. As soon as possible some of this formula will be sent to the Medical Missionaries of Mary, a ferociously dedicated group who work in the feeding camps.
“The feeding camps are places where procedures are laid down and strictly adhered to. In order to gain entry, one must be determined to have lost at least 25% of their minimum body weight. This is the threshold where death is very close. If one has lost only 20% of their minimum body weight, they sit with the crowd outside the compound and wait. Soon they will have starved enough to get in. No one knows if there will still be food then. A few people, like Dick Gregory, know the needed nutrition probably won't be there. Hundreds of thousands of people, exhausted and helpless, will gradually slip into blindness, deafness, cholera and a host of other diseases. The wheat flour will help them hold on a little longer. The knowledge that healthy people are working on the problem will help them hold on a little longer.
“There were some donated items being sold in the local market, but not a worrisome amount. A hundred agencies are presently working in Ethiopia, with the Red Cross being by far the provider of the most supplies. I heard and saw only good things about World Vision, the Swedish, British and American Save the Children organizations, UNICEF, Catholic Relief and Christian Aid. I could not even find rumors of any mismanagement. Even the government Relief and Rehabilitation Commission gets praise for their effectiveness. In the face of all I'd heard about the bureaucratic obstacles in Ethiopia, I was continuously surprised by the positive way government people conducted themselves.
“I got a visa from the Ethiopian Embassy in London although I could have been denied on technicalities. On the plane to Addis I linked up with a Japanese news team and accompanied them to the Ministry of Information where their permits to travel and film were processed. Filming in the city and general expeditions into the country were forbidden, but permission to fly or drive to almost any specific place was nearly automatic. Refusing filming in the city seemed natural enough given the potential effect on the population of having their ghastly circumstances constantly studied, composed, and recorded by well-fed visitors.
“A Swedish fellow told me that sometimes Addis was worse than the feeding camps. There are no feeding centers in Addis, but there are many starving people. They look incongruous, blended in as they are with the suits, ties and Mercedes taxis. There is, nevertheless, no discernible hostility or sense of danger. It's assumed that it would be unwise to go some places alone at night, because of the temptation you'd present. I knew of one fellow who was robbed, but he thought it was a very gentle robbery, and they only took his money. Even the soldiers posted everywhere seem serious but not menacing.
“The Franciscans are new to Africa, but seem to be on the right track. Their ‘Project Africa’ is donating a well to a village. Contributions will be accepted by Fr. Philip Marquard, OFM, St. Peter Friary, 110 W. Madison St., Chicago, IL 60602. Tel: 312/372-5111
“VMM, the Volunteer Missionary Movement, who have a center in Yorkville, IL, have invited the filming of their operations in Africa. The film would double as a training tool. They invite donations and recruits, but require a two-year commitment to the program. VMM is at 7320 Route 71, Yorkville, IL 60560.
“Observers in Addis worry that the situation may get much worse next year as the Sudan becomes more affected. It's essential that the African famine not become yesterday's news. We must imagine a solution, and then do what we can to apply it.”
“And thus,” said Sandy, as I finished reading, “You let your friends know a bit of what you experienced there. Michael, what was it that took you over there? Why did you go?”
“Basically, self-interest. I have a son, and I think that if any children anywhere are allowed to starve, then mine could be next. And I had a spiritual sense that there might be some cosmic retaliation coming my way if I ignored what was happening to the children in Ethiopia. I felt that, since I'd been to Africa twenty years ago, had my health and some time I could take from work, I could actually go there, and see for myself what an ordinary person could do.”
“Um-hum. So you take yourself to be an ordinary person and you put yourself in front of that starving woman and her baby; ah, you look healthy, physically, I mean you're not fat, but you're certainly not skinny either; you must have felt quite well-fed in front of her.”
“I did.”
“Do you think something took you over there to see that woman's face?”
“I'm not sure what mystical interpretation might be given to it. I think any person, seeing a neighbor in tragedy, responds as they can. This crisis needs a lot of little people to respond.”
“Even though you couldn't take her out to lunch or…”
“I thought I'd get off the plane in a city, and find my way to a feeding camp. I was amazed to find so many dying people so close to the plane connecting to Rome, London, Chicago. There was awesome dignity and intense consciousness in these gentle, dying people that made me consider my actions very deeply. A wretched-looking fellow leading a blind man stood nearby. They'd have come over to me, if I’d tried to help the woman, as would others. Then soldiers might intervene. Begging was discouraged, and the city lives in such a grave context, I chose to keep my wits, sense how the people were operating, and look for an opening.”
“Did you feel like coming back to the U.S. and emptying out the grocery store, and shipping it over there?”
“Sure. I thought of emptying the bank account, but that... .” The interview went on for over an hour. It was interesting listening, but not good reading. I felt I had to be so careful of everything I said. Much was in the tone instead of the words. And much was absent altogether.
One caller asked, “I was wondering what you ate each day as a visitor in Ethiopia, and how you felt about that?”
“I had a hard time eating. I told myself I wasn't hungry as long as I could, then I went to a restaurant, and ordered a cheese sandwich and a beer, because they're relatively safe. The sandwich was enormous, and I remember wondering if it was some kind of joke or test, I mean, there was no way I could eat the whole thing, so I wrapped up half of it and ate it for the next three meals. I couldn't even go in those restaurants where you pay big bucks and get a fancy meal, which there are some in Ethiopia, but I don't mean to belittle those who could. I was a novice in that kind of situation, and I wasn't there long enough to develop a surgeon's stomach.”
Another caller asked, “What would you do, if you were in charge of the relief effort in Ethiopia?”
“Well, I'd get experienced rock festival roadies and stage a show. We'd provide food, water, music, toilets, and audio visual instruction on well drilling and water pump maintenance. And I'd get helicopter crews to ferry supplies into the countryside, but that doesn't connect to the real world, in a sense. You have to work through organizations; you have to use conventional means; and you have to take into account the geopolitical stress on every situation. There's a kind of envy, and some people don't want certain others to succeed at being the helpers. In the competition for power, everybody wants their God seen as the best and most powerful, and this weighs on each transaction, so local authorities must, blah, blah, blah.”
I was reluctant to say that I'd ask people to form very long lines, like bucket brigades to pass supplies hand to hand from the port to the drought areas. It sounds crazy, but that's what we'd do in Wisconsin if we had to. If we had no supplies or transportation of any kind, we'd make lines all the way to Lake Superior if we had to.
And I was reluctant to say that the whole problem could be solved overnight by helicopters if politics permitted. It seemed to me that the picture of Black communists starving might even look like okay publicity from a short term, Capitalist point of view, the way herpes and AIDs seemed to cheer up some Capitalist leaders by validating their moralistic preachings about sex.
I was reluctant to admit that, as a middle-aged, White American male, I felt very exposed in Ethiopia, because ‘my group’ was perceived to be singularly preoccupied dominating the pecking order in the life boat. I bumped into Bulgarian and Cuban soldiers, East Germans, Marxist students, conspiratorial Capitalist sympathizers (or so they claimed), and Ethiopian graduates of Moscow's Patrice Lamumba University. (who seemed to have traded much of their delicate Ethiopian personalities for the hard boiled Communist attitude so useful in competing with hard boiled Capitalists.)
When I got my visa in London, I spoke with Teshome Teklu at the Ethiopian Embassy. He’d attended Ohio State University in the early '70s, and he remembered the Kent State shootings. He was easy to talk to. (A Swedish guy told me later that many western educated Ethiopians were recently released from or were barely staying out of prison as the government was torn between utilizing their skills and resisting their western bias.)
Teshome said, “This is a most difficult post. There is so much publicity. Tell me, will you, America has all the technicians in the world; they're stacked up like cord wood, but when you were in Ethiopia, you never showed us how to build even a single road. What is wrong with America?”
I said, “I don't know. I think a lot of my people are starving psychologically, the way your people are starving for food. Sometimes I think they're crazy. When I saw the films of the children, I was sick.”
“My wife,” Teshome said, “She yells at me because I don't want to eat. I go in my room and cry, because of what's happening to my people. We aren't beggars, but we must accept what is offered. It's embarrassing, even to the starving. Why do you want to go to Ethiopia? Are you a spy? We have them all the time. Or are you crazy?”
“I think of my own son, and of the Ethiopian fathers and, well, I'm not sure of much in this life, but I'm sure that if I was one of the Ethiopian parents whose child was starving, I'd want someone, anyone to help me.”
*****
Adam, I thought this was a valid exception to a wise rule against elliptical contracts (a communication monkeyshine #3) where people ‘help’ someone without having an invitation or specific agreement, then hold future transactions hostage until the ‘help’ is repaid.
*****
“You have children of your own, then?” asked Teshome.
“Yes, an eight-year-old boy.”
“And you have left your family to travel to Ethiopia?”
“Yes. I talked to my friends about it. Some thought it was a good idea, some didn't. Do you think it's foolish for me to go there?”
“No, not foolish, but you must not expect too much. We have spent a lot of money providing airplanes and tours to visitors. They go to the feeding camps, they cry, then they go away. They say they will send help, but often the help doesn't come. So there is some backlash from this, and you must not expect too much.”
“I'm good at staying out of the way. I'd like to help if I can, or just see the situation so I can tell my friends what's going on there.”
“You're supposed to have a letter from an organization that will take responsibility for you, and you don't. Do you have enough money?”
“Yes,” I said.
“But you don't have the shots for cholera.”
“Well, I talked to Public Health people in Minneapolis, and was told the cholera immunization only works half the time, and only on a couple of the many kinds of cholera. Cholera is treatable with antibiotics, and you can get sick from the vaccine; so, the nurse said she'd carry antibiotics, and not bother with the vaccine.”
“OK, I will give you a visa, but don't tell them I promised you an airplane or anything, and be very careful what you do.”
“Thank you,” I said. We shook hands and parted. On my way out through the sparsely decorated lobby, I met the woman with whom I'd spoken when I first arrived. She seemed stalwart and businesslike, and had told me, when she first learned that I had no letter of authority from an organization, “You cannot go to Ethiopia. I'm sorry. Next.”
Now she looked at me, her eyes so dark and deep I felt I'd never understand her full meaning as she said, “You're lucky. You can pick up your visa tomorrow.”
I checked the price of double deck buses at London Transport, then booked a flight to Addis on Aeroflot via Moscow. It was the cheapest way. But I got bumped off the flight, because they couldn't confirm a seat past Moscow, and I had no visa for Russia. Aeroflot's director had been ejected from England that day, and the flight to Moscow had suddenly filled up. I flew on Ethiopian Airways instead, one of Africa's premier carriers.
It rained that day, and people started talking about how to get seeds to the farmers. I made contacts much faster than I'd expected, and in two days, I began to feel like a voyeur. I thought I should commit six months or leave immediately. The plan I'd imagined when I began the trip was both validated and stymied. I saw the Sahara and the Sahel as a huge piece of flesh without enough capillaries for circulation, and from the moment I saw the films of the children, I imagined driving a double-deck bus around there dropping supplies, establishing a service garage, a hotel, a school. If one bus worked, I'd get another on the road, then a third, and so on. This wasn't the sort of plan that got quick support from suits-and-ties, so I decided to scout it out on my own, then do it with friends, if and when economics permitted.
The problem, however, was geopolitical, and more severe than I'd imagined. To hard-core politics players, Ethiopia seemed nearly business as usual. Any little hand I might play had to be well cased if I was to avoid getting sandbagged or Mau-Maued. I flew home, and wrote letters offering the services of myself and some willing friends with relevant skills… a high powered group with the necessary experience to operate a small transport system, open a school, build a road, dig wells, and such. I sent a little money, wrote more letters, and waited.
The U.S. government made it illegal to provide developmental aid to Ethiopia, and that was chilling. They came up with one story after another to explain why children starved, each seeming calculated to show Ethiopians botching America's relief effort. Then came Live-Aid.
Cued by Bob Geldof and Harry Belafonte, more human beings turned their eyes and ears to Live-Aid than had witnessed any other single event in history. Grass roots empathy poured from little people all over the world. In America, it competed with TV coverage of President Reagan's colon surgery. I watched both, and I was glad Reagan made it. His constituents seem insecure, and in need of his personal guidance.
Colleen worked for Bill Graham, the legendary rock promoter who staged Live Aid, and she asked him about the letter I sent them. His office wasn't involved in disbursing funds, and was in chaos from a recent fire, but he knew who did handle the money, and he said he'd check it out. It turns out there were lots of letters like mine.

Monkeyshines
chapter 17
Cunningham Children's Home was a five acre park with picturesque Oak trees and vast green lawns set on the edge of Urbana, Illinois. A winding path cris-crossed the campus, and it looked to us like a safe place for Adam to play. I'd heard claims that thousands of little kids disappeared each year, and been incredulous. I looked into it, and learned that many little dead bodies were found each year, and we got very safety conscious. When Adam said he liked the place, we decided to get hired. Cunningham was looking for houseparents to share ‘cottages’ on the grounds. There were five cottages, each housing eight or nine disturbed teens in a family setting. One of the boys' cottages was an old brick structure near the administration buildings, one of the girls' was a modernistic house near the edge of the campus, and the other three were cross-shaped ranch homes centered in the wide open west side of campus. Chris and I got the middle one of these, a cottage named Inez Rose.
Our interview was unexpectedly video taped. Jan, the supervisor conducting the interview, introduced staff members, Murray, Glenn, Bob, Tom and Ruth and Will Szikaly, then asked, "Could you start off by giving the other staff people some of the info that I got from you in our first interview, in terms of, ah, well, let's just start off with some of your backgrounds in terms of your growing up, your educational backgrounds, and then we'll move from there into your employment histories, Okay? Michael, do you want to start off?"
"Argh, yes, how far back do you want me to go?" I said, trying to tear my mind away from the camera and remember the length and breadth of the question. Jan gestured, seeming to mean start anywhere, so I named the schools I’d attended and said, "My first job in human service was at the Blessed Beatitudes Home in Chicago while I was a student at Loyola. I thought it was a good education in how not to do human service. They gathered every kind of client who received a government check, geriatrics, retarded, mentally ill, alcoholics, felons on work release, what have you, and stuck them all in together with very little program, where they seemed to share symptoms and get sicker together. I was the night attendant, and had a room there, actually lived there myself. The owner, Berny O'Connell, told the residents I was a doctor."
Then my mind ran away from those ghastly memories and locked onto the camera that ogled me from ten feet away. "I think I'll do a lot better answering questions, ah...," I said zestily, and everyone chuckled in agreement.
Chris was asked to recap her story. "I went to Trinity High School, and while I was there I organized a reading program for ghetto kids, and got the city to donate buses to take kids to class on Saturdays. I went to the University of Illinois, and then got my degree at Lake Forest College. My first teaching job was, ah, like Michael's in that it was an experience I thought showed how not to do the job of teaching. It was on an Indian reservation in Arizona, and the principal gave all the teachers ping pong paddles, and said to use them to deal with any problems we had. The school had been an internment camp for Japanese during the Second World War and it still had the high barbed wire fence around it.
"Later, in New Zealand, I worked at Te Kainga Playcenter and at the Roseneath playcenter. That experience really opened my mind to how to teach effectively. The kids were a cross section of New Zealand society. There were Maoris from the native population and middle and upper class English kids. There didn't seem to be an underclass.
"The Wellington Adventure Playground looked almost like a junkyard; it was a fenced square block that had once been a materials re-cycling center. There were car bodies, tires, drums, ropes and countless things that the kids seemed to find much more interesting than the usual back-and-forth swing or teeter-totter. I was reinforced in the idea that getting a kid's attention, from the things in the environment rather than through pressure from authority, is all important in efficient teaching. Michael and I also worked at Mary Poppin's Home Care Agency as substitute parents, and then, back in America, for our first two years at Deborah House, I substituted in the Chicago Public Schools.
"I was lucky and, after a lot of one day stands around the city, I was asked to replace an eighth grade science teacher at one school for the rest of the year. It was my weak area, I mean, I know little about biology or chemistry, all I knew about was ecology, but the teacher who was leaving advised me to do what I knew with the kids, so I organized a cleanup of a nearby vacant lot where trash was accumulating. Every day my class worked on the lot. Besides picking up debris, we built gardens, planted trees, designed small landscape features, and we painted a large mural on the wall of the adjacent building. Michael brought some of the Deborah House residents to help. It all worked out pretty well."
Bob Ekes then asked, "It sounds like you have a lot of experiences. I'm wondering how you establish yourselves with the different kids; I mean, do you have your own system of running things or would the parents tell you how to proceed?"
"Definitely the latter," I said, "We'd get a map from the parents."
Bob continued, "What's your experience with anger problems or restraining kids?"
Chris and I looked at each other. Adam climbed into Chris' lap, so I fielded the question. "Not a lot. Most of my experience with kids has been with my sister's kids who weren't disturbed, the kids I worked with at Illinois State Soldiers and Sailors Children's School were disturbed and did a lot of acting out, but I was only there a short time.
“What I was looking for were cues that would tell me if the kids' problems were being exacerbated by staff procedures. That's what I saw at ISSCS. The staff were involved in organizational wargames, that seemed to sabotage their work with kids. They were very stern, which has value in working with kids, but they seemed to carry it too far. It seemed to be all structure and no relationship. The staff didn't seem to have any personal openness left for the kids. Staff approached Chris and me during our first days, and it quickly showed that factions were feuding, some calling others communists and claiming they were trying to wreck America's family structure, others claiming born-again staff were nutty zealots, a third group seemed to feel most of the staff were just there for the paychecks regardless of their apparent philosophies. It was nuts."
"Yeah, they were going through a reorganization at the time, I remember that," Jan said, "They're closed now."
Bob returned to his point, "So, suppose you had kids who challenged you a lot, how would you discipline them?"
Adam was still on Christine's lap, behaving beautifully, but still a distraction, so I plunged ahead, "Well, first, I'd like to say that while we've had significant experience working with mentally retarded adults, I don't want to give the impression that we think we know it all. We'll be looking for help if we get involved with the kids here. That said, we have definite ideas about disciplining kids. Chris and I pretty much agree that the key is taking a positive line and establishing that we're on the same side. We try to take a role as allies not opposed authority figures."
Chris said, "I feel strongly that there is never a justification for hitting or spanking. Sometimes a kid may run into the street or something, and you may have to grab him and shake him a bit so he knows how important it is that he understand, but otherwise, I would suggest staying with positive language, and if that fails you might use time out or withdrawal of attention, or just leave the room."
Bob said, "Well, many of the kids in our population are tough angry kids who may press you hard, and they might see your leaving the room as a surrender."
Will said, "Yeah, our girls used to walk on us, I mean, they'd go nuts and be pulling all kinds of things, and we'd be in our room crawling the walls. We had some real blowups and finally the girls understood where we were coming from, but they'll get to you."
I said, "I think Chris would agree that leaving the room is only a last ditch move in a circumstance where you haven't got a positive technique in mind, the point being that it's better to leave the room than let your parent be hooked, if everyone understands what I mean by that..."
Nodding heads and quiet but affirmative sounds indicated everyone understood this reference to Eric Berne's theory of Transactional Analysis, wherein each person is described as a composite of child, parent and adult response patterns, the adult being the success-oriented one.
I continued, "We fail if our parents are hooked. We're no longer influential once the kid's disruptive behavior gets inside our emotional system. Salesmen recognize the subtle magic of positive language, and disciplining kids is really a matter of selling them on the idea that certain choices are better than others. Salesmen know to set a positive image in the prospective buyer's mind, strictly avoid disputing, and concentrate on reinforcing the value of things being sold. Effectiveness in disciplining kids seems to increase as we identify with the kids and use positive language to get them to believe that they want what we're selling. If we decide they don't deserve that much energy or respect, and that they should just do what they're told or else, we reduce our productivity."
Bob added, "We do have an approach here that you might consider an additional option." He gestured to Murray Rodnick sitting next to him, and everyone chuckled, Murray most of all. "Murray is usually available for crisis intervention, for those times when you think you have to separate yourself from a kid who's having an anger or violence problem."
Murray turned out to be our safety release valve. He was a patient saint with kids, but he was also a wrestler and could quickly and painlessly immobilize a kid who'd run amok and become a danger. And he never got angry in the process.
I said, "I think some primitive principles apply. We're influential according to the well being we project. If we get angry, bully, bluster and demand, the kids may obey us when we're watching them, but that's only external control. They'll sense we're weak and confused, and they'll disregard our instruction when they think they can get away with it. If we're fair and genuinely concerned, we can be strict when it counts, and still develop the kids' own internal controls that they'll use when they're out of sight. They'll see us as healthy animals who have something inside us they instinctively want. They'll pay attention to us."
Chris said, "Paying attention is a concept we used at Deborah House a lot. We told the staff that the most severe punishment they should use was to withhold attention, because attention is like money, and you get what you pay for. We literally pay kids to do whatever it is we give them our attention for. If we pay attention mostly to kids' bad behavior, then that's what we'll get."
Jan Carter then asked, "To what extent were you involved in administrative matters at Deborah House, in terms of grant writing, dealing with state monitors, intake policy, etc.?"
Chris said, "We actually started six months before any residents moved in. CARC had already opened one of the first independent living training programs, but it was in a dormitory building, not the home-like atmosphere they wanted; so they found an old mansion on the north side of Chicago, and we spent the first six months fixing the building, meeting with parents whose kids were to be involved, working on the grant proposal, and interviewing applicants."
I said, "It was critical to start with a core group of high functioning, well- behaved applicants, because we expected that 80% of what new residents would learn, they'd learn from the old residents."
Bob asked, "What kind of staff approach did you use? Did you have teams?"
Chris said, "Yes, we're definitely team people. We think you can do much better work with a number of people working together than having one person telling everyone else what's what."
I said, "We had eight activity therapists, a speech therapist, whose position was later up-graded to communication therapist as we looked for improved ability to communicate ideas as well as to speak understandable words. We had a nurse who helped each team determine if a physical condition needed more attention than it was getting, and a social services coordinator, or social worker, that job title kept changing along with the regulations. It was definitely a team approach, but the team was pretty much the same people, except for the activity therapist. We had each activity therapist focus most closely on a couple of residents, and then attend the meetings where their particular resident was being considered."
Ruth asked, "Was there much turnover with your clients?"
Chris said, "It seemed there were three groups. A third were there at the start and are still there. A second came, quickly failed to adapt, and left, like one woman from the north shore who wouldn't even consider washing the floor. She said her maid had always done the floor. She didn't last long. She went back to her maid. A third group stayed for a time, seemed to learn what they needed to learn, then went on to their own apartments. That was the plan for all the residents, but we never put a time limit on their graduation."
Jan said, "We're about out of time, so if anyone has any last questions... ."
Bob said, "Just a couple of points; what strengths and weaknesses would attend your working at Cunningham and why are you working in this field? By strengths and weaknesses, I mean what can we offer you, in terms of a place to work, and where do you expect difficulty."
I said, "I think our life experience would be good for Cunningham, and as a weakness, I confess to a concern that I might be too old and tired to gear up to the energy level needed to care about these kids. I'm 35. After the stress of Deborah House, I don't know if I've got the spit left to do it again. If we were talking about our living with 18 people instead of 9, I wouldn't be at this table now. My reason for working in this field, well, ah, it sounds corny, but it helps me stay humble. It keeps me in touch with reality. Doing service to fellow human beings, I know how corny it sounds, but that's what has kept me interested over the years."
Bob said, "I know exactly what you mean."
Everyone mumbled rather sheepish affirmation of similar motives, almost as if they were admitting to a kind of lunacy, so I added, "Actually, I do it for the money." Everyone laughed, then I said, "Seriously, I used to tell our poorly paid staff at Deborah House that, while it was true we were paid poorly, we couldn't disregard the fact that we were paid; we weren't volunteering our time. Checks came regularly."
Jan said, "Chris, do you want to finish on that question?"
Chris said, "Like Michael said, I think our experience would be good for Cunningham. I work in this field so Adam will learn that we're all part of the whole world, and not just isolated individuals. And I don't expect any problems at all."
Amidst chuckles and smiles, Jan concluded the interview.
For the next two years we lived, ate and slept for Adam and the boys at Inez Rose cottage. It would be a full year before we took our first day off. Of course, it served us as well. It distracted us from our personal fears and failures. There wasn't time for them. We had work, friends, a living wage, and a sense that we were helping.
My first day on the job, I was called out of a meeting and told to sit on a snarling, cursing, apoplectic kid on the lawn outside the administration building. The assistant director, who currently sat on the kid, was required in the meeting. Mike Butler was the kid's name. He spit at me, called me vile names and threatened to kill me if I let him up. So I didn't let him up. After 15 minutes, I told him I felt stupid sitting on him, particularly as we were on the front lawn where God knows who was watching us through windows or even from the Convenient store half a mile away. Eventually, Mike burned up all his energy, stopped struggling, and agreed to sit next to me peacefully while we waited for instructions on what to do next.
The assistant director came out and introduced the kid to me formally. I was his new houseparent. We shook hands and walked together to our cottage. I thought it was a pretty short honeymoon for a new staff.
Life in the cottage was fast paced, but kind of fun. The kids were always testing limits by going off on one harebrained tangent or another. It wasn't surprising to learn that the local police referred to us as animal tamers.
There was Mike Butler, Larry Clare, Mike Green, Jim Huebotter, John Reynolds, "Rex" Smith, Kris Tompson, Jimmy Curtis, Ramiro Bosquez, Mark, Antwuan, Jerome, Marvin, John Bollinger, etc.
A typical version of the dreaded Chinese water torture, applied by teenagers with words instead of water, was an exchange I listened to as I sat in our living room. Chris was working in the kitchen and I heard water running in the sink. Jim Huebotter walked past me and into the kitchen. I heard cabinet doors open and close, then he asked Chris abruptly, "Do you mind if I make a mess?"
"Where?" Chris asked.
"It's not going to be a very big mess," Jim said, his voice touched with impatience and mock sincerity.
"Where?" Chris repeated.
"On the black counter," Jim said.
"Yes," Chris said firmly but friendly, "No one can eat until dinner is served, cuzz I'm making a special dinner for everyone."
"But I'm not eating after 5 o'clock," Jim said.
"Dinner's supposed to be ready at five," Chris said.
"Er, I'm not eating after 5 o'clock," Jim stressed impatiently.
"OK, we can eat at one minute after 5 o'clock," Chris said calmly.
"I can't eat at one minute after five," Jim insisted mildly.
"Why?" Chris asked mildly.
"Because I already decided I was not going to eat one minute after five," Jim said, loosing a razor thin slice of his composure.
"What about your decision last night when you told me how nice it would be if you had fresh vegetables every night?" asked Chris, loosing a razor thin slice of her composure, "And I'm responding, and you come to me and say you're not going to eat."
The conversation was briefly interrupted when Little Jimmy Curtis, who we knew was eating out that night, walked through the kitchen saying, "I'm not going to eat." The phone rang, and Curtis answered it.
"Hmmm?" Chris said.
Jim didn't answer.
"Well, if you don't want to eat steamed fresh green beans, steamed fresh zucchini, and a fresh salad with fresh mushrooms, fresh celery, that good hot house lettuce, fresh green onions and fresh cauliflower, go ahead and make a mess on my counter."
The conversation was interrupted again when Dewayne walked in the back door and said, "Chris, guess what, man, I couldn't believe it, man, I was down at rec, and I said, 'Vince, (the recreation director), take us to McDonalds, man,' and Vince said, Vince said, 'Yeah, take 'em to McDonalds,' you know, and I asked him if he was payin', and he said, 'No.' He thought we was, you know, and then Vince, man, Vince tricked us out, man. He said, 'Take these fine young boys to McDonalds.' And he give Tim $6 fur me, Shayne 'n Marty. He took us to McDonalds. Ain't that sumpthin'?" Dewayne left as abruptly as he'd come, and silence returned to the kitchen.
"I haven't been eating at all today," Jim Huebotter surfaced.
After a lengthy pause, during which I assumed Huebotter was rummaging in the fridge and messing up the black counter, he said, "I wish you would have told me about this. I could have planned for it. I do not know, I did not know until now that you were cooking."
"So, not only would you like me to do this, you would like me to inform you of when I'm going to do it," Chris said fully composed again. "Jim, oh, Jim," Chris went on in falsetto, "Now I'm going to cut some vegetables. Oh, Jim, now I'm going to make some salad."
"Exactly," said Huebotter.
"I'm afraid I can't do all that."
"OK, that's fine," Huebotter said curtly.
"It's here if you wanna eat it, fine, if not, far out," Chris said.
"Whatever's good for ya, I like the both ideas... ." Huebotter voice trailed away unintelligibly, and silence followed.
"Oh, I need this," Huebotter said.
"Just eat some processed, over-refined sugar," Chris said, alluding to the many claims Huebotter had made seemingly favoring healthy food.
"Um-hum," Huebotter parried.
"And some processed, over-refined white flour, some dead sugar and some dead white bread," Chris said, then she began humming a tune.
"I thought you were ignoring me when I told you I'd like to have vegetables," Huebotter said after a minute or so.
"Do I regularly ignore you," Chris asked.
"Hm, No," Huebotter answered.
"Then why do you think I would ignore you then?"
"Because... ."
Chris cut him off, and said, "Especially when I like vegetables... ."
Huebotter cut her off, "You didn't say anything... ."
Chris cut him off again, "That's really self destructive." Her tone was light, friendly mocking now.
"Cuzz you didn't say anything, after I got done... ." Huebotter's sentence trailed away to nothingness again.
"Oh, yes I did," Chris closed in on him.
Dewayne was back in the kitchen asking, "What's in here." He was ignored.
"I said, 'Oh, good, I like vegetables, too, I'll try to make them everyday.' That's what I said," Each of Christine's word was a loving hammer blow, evenly cadenced and full of certainty.
"Try, you didn't make 'em yesterday, so I thought you weren't going to," Huebotter said, trying to get off the ropes.
"Yesterday I made 'em, I made fresh green onions, a fresh salad, and fresh zucchini. Today is the day after yesterday."
"Well, I didn't know, I didn't know about that. You didn't tell me that," Huebotter was cornered.
"You were here. You ate it. God!" Chris continued in mostly mock exasperation, "I don't know if I'm going to survive."
After some more silence, I heard what sounded to me like a drawer falling to the floor after being pulled out to far. "Sorry," Huebotter said blandly, "I didn't mean that to be very loud."
As I followed Adam into the kitchen, he said, "Mom, look at me."
Chris squealed, "Adam, you look like Pinnochio." Which he did with his Pinnochio mask on. Huebotter disappeared to his room as Chris told me about the canned potatoes and meat loaf soon to be delivered in the cater caddy from the main kitchen.
The crescendo of my time at Cunningham occurred during the big Christmas party of our second year. After much careful planning, and the miraculous success of all our boys at keeping it secret, our boys and our team showed up at the gala Christmas party dressed in tuxedoes. Even Huebotter, who wanted to wear a sweat shirt, kept the secret and let me badger him into a tuxedo at the last. We fixed it so we'd be the last cottage to arrive, so no one saw us until we entered the main hall. As we walked in, the 150 people already seated there broke into spontaneous, exuberant, extended applause and stood up in salute. I scanned the faces of our boys and saw what a houseparent dreams of. Their faces were plumb flush with pride and soaring self-esteem. They'd never been so well applauded before, and I doubted they ever would be again, but for a moment in their lives they were. It makes me misty just to recall it.
Another happy moment was provided by Jerome and Antwuan. They were the first Black kids we had at Inez Rose, veterans of Chicago's west side ghetto. Both were 15, neither knew his father, and Antwuan had from time to time been tied to a radiator by his mother and whipped with an electric cord. They were both street wise, gristly and tough, but they’d spent some time with Huebotter in a program in Chicago where they had all done well. We were optimistic.
One weekend, shortly after they'd arrived, they came to me with a request. "We been invited to a party, Mike," Antwuan said, sporting a massive, ear-to-ear smile.
"It's a guy from school, and the party's going to be in a motel right down the street from here," said Jerome, with faint apprehension.
"Would it be alright for us to go?" asked Antwuan.
"Ouch," I said.
"We'll be in at whatever time you say," said Jerome.
"Yeah, whatever you say," said Antwuan. They were sitting there in my little houseparent's room, wide-eyed and eager to go to that party, and hanging on my permission. I knew these guys had done lots of stuff without giving a shit about anybody's permission. I liked them, and I didn't want them to stop giving a shit about my permission.
"You know," I said, "This sounds like the kind of party that most houseparents would say flat out, 'No!' Now if I said that, I'd be assuming you guys weren't able to make a reasonable choice about whether you ought to be at that party or not. I think you are able to make that choice. It sounds like the kind of a party, I mean, really, in a motel, the odds are there'll be dope, naked girls, loud music and maybe even a fistfight. All my instincts tell me it's a real bad idea for you guys to go to this party, but I'm going to give you permission. After what I've said, if you still want to go to this party, you go ahead. But look out for yourselves if it goes sour."
"Oh, thanks, Pop," said Antwuan.
"Thanks a lot, Mike," said Jerome.
They were out of their chairs and out of the room in a flash.
"What was that all about?" asked Christine who was entering the room, and was almost trampled as the boys ran out.
"I don't know," I said, a bit forlornly, "I might have just bought a load of grief." Then I explained the conversation with the boys.
"Well, we're supposed to help them learn how to be responsible. I think you did the right thing. Let's hope they do."
Twenty minutes later they were back at my door wanting to talk to me. I was still trying to calculate the total tonnage of possible damage this party might cause. I was already getting a lot of flak and sabotage from another houseparent couple for not being strict enough. Antwuan and Jerome came in and sat down. They both looked subdued and sober.
Jerome said, in the stutter that always made long conversations out of short ones, "We been thinking about what you said, and we decided not to go to that party." He seemed sort of relieved. Antwuan looked almost sick, but he nodded his head in agreement.
"I think you guys have made a very good decision," I said, nearly ecstatic, "I'm proud of you both." They perked up a little from the stroke, and left the room jauntily. For the next year that we all lived together, our relationships thrived.
There were some philosophical problems for me at Cunningham. I thought the policy on drugs was unsound, of course. It was conventional; that is, it was dishonest and counter-productive, and it eventually required us to search the kids with whom we lived. I thought the policy was forced on Cunningham by political pressure from the community. I thought the community had long since married itself off to an irrational, illegal scapegoatist approach to drug use that unwittingly catered to the interests of organized crime, moralistic religionists and members of the law enforcement and criminal justice systems, all of whom had social and economic vested interests in continuing this replay of the disastrous Prohibition policy. I was frustrated to see so many well-intentioned people drawn into this charade, and I worried that, if the truth should ever force its way into their minds, it might destroy them.
The psychiatrist, Milt Blavatsky, once said in a staff meeting, "Well, if you're going to give 'em drugs, we're not going to be able to deal with their problems."
I was annoyed, "Nobody said anything about giving 'em drugs! I said we should be honest. If we lie, the kids'll find out, and then they'll stop listening to us. And I don't like making a kid think I care about him less because he uses drugs."
Milt said, "You can't separate a person from their behavior."
Chris and I thought it was essential to separate a person from their behavior. I said, "I need to be able to love a person regardless of their behavior."
Milt said, "Kids need to understand that obeying the law is the right and moral thing to do. We have to teach them that a good kid obeys the law."
"I said, "Well, laws are political, not moral. What you're saying is what good Germans said in the thirties. I'm comfortable teaching kids it's prudent to obey the law, but not that the law tells them what's good or moral."
Tom Powell said, "Well, we aren't going to declare war on the United States." Tom was executive director, and a major reason why Chris and I wanted jobs at Cunningham. He’d grown up there, and he had consummate skill in dealing with troubled kids, as did Milt. Indeed, most of the staff were highly skilled, but I was convinced ‘political realities’ often kept them from succeeding with kids. Social policy was determined by anonymous forces to whom these generic kids were a peripheral concern. In effect, we often looked for these kids under a streetlight that was far from the dark alley in which they were lost.
One of our kids, Marvin, had a lot of problems, among them a drug problem. Marvin was never far from a giant size jar of instant tea. He drank many large glasses of heavily sugared iced tea every day. He might have had difficulty communicating had he drunk no iced tea at all, but in fact, he seemed to be zonked on iced tea. He looked and acted the way I imagined I would if I drank twenty cups of coffee a day. We knew he was "wired" on sugar and caffeine, but it was legal.
Another kid, Mike Green, was doing well in school and in the cottage, and seemed to be the rare success story. He hadn't done well at anything for a long time before he came to Cunningham. One Friday night, he was caught smoking pot with some kids in the park. He caught a full load of buckshot by our Procrustean drug abuse rules, and then tipped over. His performance deteriorated in every visible area of his life. Killed by the cure, I thought, another victim of our cult of punishment.
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Monkeyshine #14, Punishment, a failure of the imagination where we bully a problem by inflicting pain on "wrongdoers."
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Negative Reinforcement -> Displaced Aggression. It's an inherited, knee jerk reaction. We feel attacked. We need to retaliate. Our righteous hand throws the attacker out an imaginary window, like a bucket of slop that hopefully never lands. Our left hand pockets the cleansed feeling we get from ascribing evil to others. At all costs, we avoid responsibility for that slop; the wimpy child inside us just can't bear the self-criticism.
Of course, it would all work out for the best for Mike, in the long run. And whether I bitch about it or not doesn't make any difference. From my point of view, me being a Judeo-Christian rock and roll, existential hippie quasi-socialist, free enterprise Bhuddist, rhythm and blues, Graeco-Roman pluralist, urban Italian half-breed, born again native American country boy, child care worker - all experience is just grist for our mills.
After two years at Cunningham, my hair was about to catch fire. In 1982, we left, and I took a job at WDZL Channel 39, a new TV station in Florida as the Supervisor of Building and Maintenance, Director of Security, and film editor. We found an apartment on the beach between Ft. Lauderdale and Hollywood, and it was one of our best years ever. Chris taught Adam at home. Our aversion to public schools was aggravated in the case of south Florida where the locals argued over whether to raise the class size to 56 kids per class or hold the line at 52. And we heard disease of the week reports on the radio. Pinkeye, dysentery, head lice, meningitis, etc. Doing school at home left Chris and Adam struggling with the same hard decision every day, whether to go up the beach or down the beach.
I had a company car and refreshing variety in my job. One day I dressed in cover-alls and painted the hallway, the next I negotiated with Honeywell on the installation of a new security device, and the next I edited a major film, like "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" which, for airing on our Romance in the Afternoon movie program, meant putting commercials into the combat portions of the film and preserving romantic dialogue. Returning to the non-institutional private sector satisfied my long-unmet need to see hard, measurable results in my work.
As all good things are wont to do, this also came to an end. Idyllic as it was in so many ways, we managed to find problems. No kids lived near the ocean, so Adam had no neighborhood friends. Most kids lived inland, in the swamps, or in isolated affluent areas we couldn't afford, and which didn't really qualify as neighborhoods anyway. The station was put up for sale as investors squabbled over whose right it was to piss down whose back, and I saw my days as the owner's loyal assistant numbered.
We left tasty fresh-squeezed orange juice, loaded as it was with heavy metal, like barium and strontium, from the Chicago human sludge that had been used to fertilize the orange groves since time immemorial, and moved back to my mom's, "Gralma's", in Saint Wisconsin. It was a hard time for me. Five minutes out of work, and I felt I'd never earn another dime. I had some annoying surgery and my one and only 24-hour migraine headache. Wow!
We escaped for a while to California. It was another boll weevil period. We drove to Marin County to answer an ad for houseparents in a rural setting among eucalyptus trees on the coast. Chris and I had many fond memories of the area, and the initial phone contact sounded interesting. We imagined the area was inhabited by gray beard hippies who'd survived the pogrom, entrenched, and grown up gracefully. There was some of that, and our interview went well. The program coordinator was from Chicago; we talked easily, and the program sounded terrific. A tiny flag waved when I saw her sign her name and affix a preposterously huge M.A. after the signature.
The kids they served were young. I’d hoped this meant they did more than just socially popular anti-drug programs. I'd tired of the same silly arguments, the same preoccupation with negatives. We needed a positive point in the distance toward which we could march. The agency only placed three kids in each house, and each house was on an ordinary street in the community. We put three questions to the coordinator. Were the kids participating voluntarily? Did the program require corporal punishment or physical intimidation? Could we run the house as we would our home? We got resounding affirmatives.
We almost signed up on the spot, but experience had taught us to take time to consider important decisions. We returned to Berkeley and, after a lot of back and forth on the subject, we decided to return to the Midwest. My reasoning was that, since we were in doubt about the job, we should apply our rule of thumb, "When in doubt, don't." This wasn't an exclusive rule, by any means. It was a neo-John Wayneism. He’d said, "Be sure you're right, then go ahead."
Towing a U-Haul trailer behind our '54 Chevy, we drove to Madison, Wisconsin. In a Perkin's Restaurant parking lot, in the middle of the night, Chris said we should take that job back in Marin. "No problem," I said.
Actually, I didn't mind all the driving or the confusion. I just wanted to be sure Chris made the decision. If it went sour, as I assured her it would, I didn't want the dead bird hanging around my neck. Her reasoning was that the job sounded so good, we should try it, even though experience suggested a yucky underside would soon present itself. Chris argued persuasively that we'd always wonder if we'd made a mistake if we assumed the glass was half empty instead of half full. We had to taste test the water. We drove to Gralma's, dropped off most of our things, and headed back west.
The house we got was set on a hillside in the Inverness Wildlife Sanctuary. Deer came into the driveway, and I'd shoo them away when they stuck their antlered heads in our open window. We cleaned up the filthy house, and got acquainted with the kids, Jason, 11, and Kevin, 12. They were human enough, just desperately starved for attention. Adam attended a very progressive public school and did his first pottery. So far, so good.
We bought an old Honda station wagon for driving the boys the 70 mile round trip to the agency school. The road wound along the coast, through hills and woods, and the trip offered a good time for connecting with the boys. The other staff seemed mellow California. Two other new staff, Terry, a New Zealander, and Mimi, a Minnesotan became houseparents at the agency the same time we did. We quickly came to rely on each other for emotional support.
Then the yucky underside appeared. The kids weren't voluntary participants. They’d had a choice of us or lock up. And the use of physical force was also misconstrued. It was a regular feature of the program. Assaults were barely euphemized by staff and kids alike as ‘take downs.’ They were ubiquitous. If a kid didn't brush his teeth quickly enough, he might be tackled, dragged, pinned and/or glowered at. If a kid brushed his teeth when he was told after that, then the operation seemed justified. If the kid tackled, dragged, pinned and tore the clothes off some hapless lady in a park some years in the future, it would be assumed this kid wasn't tackled, dragged, pinned and glowered at enough when he was a child. A foolproof way to analyze behavior.
As a last straw, we had to hold weekly group meetings in our home. We tried to shift them to the school or even out to our garage, but the coordinator held fast. I felt that she’d gotten the idea that we wanted to snatch some of her authority. The fact was that we'd attended more group meetings than a horse had hairs, and were willing to attend more, but the effect on our home life was unacceptable. After the group members had cried, ranted, cursed, sobbed, screamed, thrown things, and threatened each other for the prescribed time, the ‘therapist’ would wobble out to his or her car and return to the sanctity of their home or the nearest tavern. We’d be left in an emotional cesspool, with ghastly feelings stuck on the walls like soft shit that slid slowly down toward the floor for hours and sometimes days.
We checked out and returned to Berkeley. I inspected cargo at the Oakland docks and Chris did child care. Adam studied computer, gymnastics and algebra. We got pretty healthy. Actually, it was more than that. The gymnastics program at "Sportopia" featured expert teachers, Japanese folks who spoke little English, and who were gifted at motivating kids. I watched Adam shed some of his baby shyness, try hard to learn difficult exercises and flash embryonic confidence from his disbelieving eyes after his first successful backflip.
In June of '84, I returned to Wisconsin. My mother was sick and wanted company. The local school served Adam, and the Henks offered me a job selling rubber stamps and office supplies. I raced across southern Wisconsin and Minnesota like a guy delivering hot pizzas, born again, this time a traveling salesman. Christine worked as a Headstart ‘home base’ teacher. She delivered hot educational enrichment to little kids, the most critical work on this damaged planet.
I had a mid-life crisis then, if that's what it is when a 40 year old man looks at his life to see if there's anything of value there. While I was doing this I saw films of starving children in Ethiopia. I felt compelled to go there to see for myself what was up. Upon my return, I gave a report on public radio station, WOJB, at the reservation of the Lac Courte Oreilles (la coo der ay) band of the Ojibwa tribe in northern Wisconsin.