Author Robert Crais started out in life as a working-class kid from Louisiana — “My family is all cops and hardhats,” he said in a recent telephone interview. Then, as a young man, he literally headed west and swiftly succeeded in making a name for himself as a television scriptwriter and producer. His story might have made a tidy Horatio Alger novella. But to the surprise of his TV-industry peers, Crais took a detour in a “weird perverse direction,” a direction that, 18 novels later, has landed his work on bestseller lists seven times and garnered him an international following for his crime thrillers, 15 of which feature private investigators Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Crais will be reading from and discussing his newest novel, Taken, at Warwick’s in La Jolla, Wednesday, January 25, at 7:30 p.m.
What possessed Crais to take the leap from the stink of Louisiana oil refineries to the television entertainment industry to the solitary pursuit of a novelist?
“One week I was swatting mosquitoes in the bayou, and then I was on a sound stage with people like [actor] Jack Klugman. … But when you work in Hollywood, you’re working for somebody else. It’s collaborative art, and I enjoyed it. But— I didn’t want anything to stand between me and the reader, the audience. I wanted to tell my stories my way. It was about wanting to have my own voice. … And then it took many, many more years to be able to make a living on my novels, moving back and forth, back and forth between the two media.”
As is the case with many successful authors, Crais’ persistence was not a lark. It had been a long-term dream for him.
“I’ve always wanted to be a writer. First one in my family to go to college. Came out here to be a TV writer, but I really wanted to be a novelist.”
Now Crais describes himself as a “reformed television writer,” although he has a gift for writing visual action that shines in Taken and makes it a read-in-one-sitting book, despite its 342 pages.
“I think maybe one of the reasons I wrote TV and movies first, and that success in TV came to me quickly, is because I thought visually. Then, maybe because I was a baby writer in television, I learned to write visually. So then, when I finally got to the point of writing novels, that visual nature, I use it constantly. I don’t know how to not use it. When I’m writing a scene, I’m seeing the scene in my head. It isn’t just words that I’m typing. I’m the film director. I’m getting clips and editing it together. … It’s one of the reasons I write page-turners. It’s like Fred Astaire. It looks easy until you try it. Then you realize how much it takes to put it together.”
Indeed, Taken has a violent and convoluted plot that nonetheless feels as graceful as Fred Astaire in his famous ceiling dance in Royal Wedding. Cole and Pike — and their mercenary buddy Jon Stone — perform a seemingly impossible dance to keep one clever step ahead of the bajadoras, who target vulnerable immigrants attempting to cross the Mexico-U.S. border; the Korean mafia and their human cargo; and two innocents caught in a murderous kidnapping and extortion ring.
But for all the book’s machismo and soulless brutality, Crais has created in Cole, Pike and Stone a thoroughly believable bond, with their unique sense of right and wrong and a rather tender masculine intimacy — something that smacks of the tales warriors tell after a few too many shots. The three characters’ connection is both an indomitable weapon as they take on some very bad guys and a humanizing comfort that makes them feel real, a band of brothers.
“One of my big things is writing about family,” Crais explained. “My guys aren’t married. They’ve built a family for themselves. Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, they are family. This is the closest thing they have to brothers, maybe closer than brothers.”
Crais’ deftly written contrasts between the action, violent enough to bring tears to your eyes, and his protagonists’ moments of odd but compelling humanity are marks of a gifted writer. No doubt, the cops and hard hats in his family are proud.
Best-selling crime novelist (and longtime Fallbrook resident) T. Jefferson Parker has a gift for challenging readers with sympathetic villains — even those who would have their victims skinned alive. And the threat of flaying is what drives the action in Parker’s newest Charlie Hood novel, The Jaguar. (Parker will be reading from and signing The Jaguar at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in Clairemont Mesa and at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Fallbrook’s Cafe des Artistes.)
In The Jaguar, Hood heads deep into Mexico’s Yucatan jungle, where a kidnap victim, singer Erin McKenna, has been hidden to await one of several possible fates: to be skinned alive by the deranged son of an engaging and sorrowful drug cartel lord, Benjamin Armento; to be rescued by Hood with a million-dollar ransom; to be freed by her husband, Bradley Jones, in a raid on the drug lord’s compound; or to charm her captor with a narcocorrido fabuloso, extolling his adventures and conquests in balladic verse.
As the threat drives the book’s action, so creation drives the characters of The Jaguar. McKenna struggles to nurture a life growing within her and to save her own by writing a ballad to satisfy her kidnapper, while Armento attempts to fashion a legend for himself that will compensate for his failed parenthood. Amid their tormented negotiations, Parker does what he does best: He creates intriguing characters whose imperfections and obsessions transform the crime fiction genre into something entertaining and literary, something brutal and lyrical, something oddly familiar — despite the exotic locales and mysteries that populate the novel. His characters seem familiar because they are so human, so believable.
In this, the third of Parker’s border series, he has ratcheted down the violence between the Mexican drug cartels and law enforcement (although there’s still plenty of it) and ramped up the interpersonal intrigue. In particular, he develops the relationship between the perennially baffling Mike Finnegan and Hood, who cannot determine whether Finnegan is indeed a magical contemporary of 19th-century bandit Joaquin Murrieta, as he claims, or a modern-day Machiavelli, manipulating the story’s players in his quest for power and sadistic satisfaction.
McKenna is anguished by the revelation that the man she adores has misled her, while Jones fights internally to give up his vanity in exchange for the help he needs to save his wife from the peril in which he has put her. Armento is confronted with murderous competitors and his own devilish sense of honor, which requires grotesque retribution for such hapless victims as an unfriendly journalist. Plenty of other characters battle or align with one another in an ongoing drug war where integrity can be a deadly weakness.
In addition to his finely crafted characters, Parker weaves critical contemporary issues into his plot, from the unsolved murders of thousands of young women in Juarez, Mexico, to a child-molesting priest to the devastating “iron river,” the persistent flow of weapons from the United States to Mexico (and the title of Parker’s first book in the series). Parker’s research of gun and drug trafficking across the permeable line between the two nations, and the effects on both, makes the series an enlightening read for anyone concerned about the border that attempts to divide us.
All told, The Jaguar is a weighty and entertaining exploration of vice and virtue, staged in a complex plot that leaves the reader eager to find out what will develop for Charlie Hood and his cohorts in the next border series novel — due out in early 2013.
In August 2010, I published a post on terms of venery, or collective nouns, such as “a pride of lions.” Author James Lipton had revived the fading art of venery with the 1968 publication of his book, An Exaltation of Larks, and my family has since fancied venery as a game.
The original post has garnered some generous attention from word lovers over the last sixteen months, resulting in gifts from contributors known and unknown.
Given the season, it seems timely to follow through as I originally indicated, with an updated list of terms submitted by readers — and an invitation to continue tossing your gems this way. Perhaps a more comprehensive list will encourage Mr. Lipton’s enthusiasm for a new edition of his fabulous book. …
Take a look at the collected results of our effort to date, below, and add your creations in the comments.
Christopher
An astonishment of great blue herons
Karen Cunagin
A flirt of butterflies
Elise
A gluttony of pigs
Hunt Gressitt
A burst of pimples A pile of hemorrhoids A smear of politicians A line of writers A pool of swimmers A host of guests An army of Marines (sorry, Steve) A ruck of sacks A gross of emesis An assemblage of builders A clique of noises A gang of planks A litter of gurneys A Mound of candy bars A class of elitists A clutch of purses A hunk of actors A deficiency of imbeciles A ball of dancers A mope of melancholics A clump of chumps A slew of pitchers A jack of asses
K-B Gressitt
A starburst of generals An orgy of envy A mass of bishops An ecstasy of miracles A scandal of penises A smooch of teens A swoon of romantics An illiteracy of dunces A bangle of bracelets A fury of revenge A gorging of gifts A pomposity of the elite A caterwaul of cats An instigation of idiocies A demagoguery of fundamentalists A ridicule of reviewers A slam of critics A syncophancy of fans An orient of sexualities An assault of slurs
Scott Gressitt
An inkling of writers A splinter of woodworkers A kitchen of cabinetmakers A smarm of salesman A dash of gentlemen A disobeyanse of sons A duty of friends A sparkle of dental techs A smear of pap testers A collage of artists A noise of politicians A shard of glassblowers A cuteness of babies A whine of children An arrogance of lawyers A knock of sheriffs A ring of Avon ladies A puke of partiers A skin of nudists A spray of hairdressers A broom of street cleaners A slew of hunting terms A stretch of limos A blare of fire trucks A smidgeon of cooks A trifle of young lovers A heartbreak of teenagers A flake of psoriasis patients A powder of coke dealers A line of coke dealers A snort of coke dealers A breath of dentists A look of models An act of thespians A shiver of ice fisherman A recovery of alcoholics A screech of driving instructors A whistle of traffic cops A flap of hang gliders A whisper of nuns A murmur of taxpayers An arrangement of florists A setting of authors A demeanor of judges A beg of defendants A denial of addicts A cross of transvestites A short of cash A stack of tellers A plot of writers An axe of executioners A superfluity of venerists
Kevin Langley
A pack of idiots
Dick Matheron and Bill Toone
A battery of Priii (from Toyota)
MJS
A chatter of wives A brilliance of word wonks A volume of wordsmiths A vanity of wags
Some years ago, when my honey was scheduled to return from a stint in Iraq, a longtime friend suggested that I welcome him home with a Brazilian wax.
“A what?” I asked, and she proceeded to explain the painful process of denuding female genitalia. “What!? Eewww!” was my visceral response.
She insisted, extolling the virtues of hairlessness, which seemed rather minimalist: “Men love it,” she said.
I blurted out something along the lines of, “When men slather their nether regions with hot wax and rip all their pubic hair from the follicles, that’s when I’ll consider waxing to be anything other than a product of misogyny.”
She insisted still, explaining that at least some men did wax their nether regions, that many gays had been waxing for years and straight men were beginning to take it up.
Now, I love this woman, and we’d had each other’s back through many a feminist action, so I typically lent credence to her sage advice, but this tidbit was nonplussing. We’d spent our adult lives challenging all the many things “men love” that are really shitty for women: men’s devotion to paying women less than they make, their persistent desire to control women’s reproduction, their fondness for dismissing women’s contributions as unworthy of note in news or historical text, their penchant for convincing women they’re inadequate in order to sell more crappola, their impassioned sense of entitlement to women’s bodies that results in harassment and rape and countless other abuses. I wondered if I’d tripped over the rare furrow in my friend’s feminist path, but she avowed that she loved it, too. I wondered still, but honored her choice, something we commonly did for each other.
More recently, this topic came up again at an erotic writing workshop I teach with a friend. Most of the women in the group went with the “Eewww” response, one said she partook of Brazilians because the result was sexy, and one of the men challenged any philosophical arguments, opting for the practical: He attributed the preference some males have for clear-cut female genitalia to a distaste for hair stuck in their teeth. This elicited a few blushes, a moment of consideration, and the inevitable nervous laughter, but no resolution. The workshop closed with an unresolved question: I still wondered why women did it — for men, for themselves, or was there indeed a more insidious reason for de-bushing one’s muff?
Just last week, I witnessed another discussion on the topic, rich with analysis and opinion, vociferous and eloquently nuanced, and I was reminded of my initial, visceral response to down-there depilation: “Eewww!” Albeit inarticulate, I think I’ll stick with it, because I don’t think women come of age believing they’ve just gotta harvest that blossoming crop of pubic hair. I suspect they are taught to dislike it by the media and by others — men and women — who’ve been similarly indoctrinated by the capitalist forces that benefit from such undermining lessons. Promoting the waxing of our crotchal areas in everything from fashion magazines to pornography (hmmm, not as much difference between the two as you might think) is just another way to keep women in a subordinate position — by telling us our pubic hair is a turnoff, by profiting from our insecurities, by infantilizing our genitalia. And I just can’t stop myself from wondering why anyone would prefer that a woman’s boinkal zone appear to be that of a prepubescent girl.
Thankfully, not everyone succumbs to the self-doubt that keeps capitalism churning. When I told my guy of the welcome home he would not receive, he said, “Yeah, that’s not appealing.”
December 14, 2011, Fallbrook’s Writers Read Presents
Brandon Cesmat poetry and fiction
Laurel Corona historical fiction
Michelle Latiolais fiction, poetry and essays
T. Jefferson Parker crime fiction
Brett Stokes & Nancy Bloy Gebhardt children’s picture book
Jincy Willett fiction
Café des Artistes 103 S. Main Street, Fallbrook, CA 5:30 Doors open, supper menu available (call for reservations, 760-728-3350) 6:00 – 8:00 Readings, signings and gift shopping!
What better gift for your favorite readers than books signed by your favorite local authors!
Join us for an evening of readings by some of the region’s best authors and have them inscribe their books for your loved ones.
Mysterious Galaxy bookstore will be handling sales and can accept major credit cards.*
Book selections include (and we’ll have lots more!):
For more information, contact K-B Gressitt at 760-522-1064 or kbgressitt@gmail.com.
* Brandon Cesmat’s books can be purchased with check or cash.
We are so frequently exposed to violence in the United States, most of us probably figure that, like pornography, we know violence when we see it. Enemies go to war, and we watch the carnage live on TV’s 24-hour news cycle. People physically harm each other on our streets and in our homes, and we tally their numbers with the rest of the tidy crime statistics. We replicate violent imagery in film and television, in music and video games, and eagerly consume it as entertainment. Yes, violence is pervasive, and most of us probably figure we have it pegged. But we’d be wrong.
Violence is not solely a physical act committed by one person on another, by one group on another, by one armed force on another. Violence ranges from the “Well, duh!” of, say, campus police brutality to the “WTF’s violent about that?” of, say, public budget cutting that abandons marginalized people to destitution. But we’d be wrong not to see the latter as violence. And if you have any affinity for the Occupy movement, a quick lesson in violence might be worth your while — a lesson set in the context of California’s two public university systems, Cal State University (CSU) and University of California (UC).
Let’s start with something relatively easy. This is the now infamous 18 November 2011 video shot at UC Davis, when a small group of students was pepper-sprayed directly in the face as the students were attempting to peacefully “occupy” the campus quad in solidarity with the Occupy movement and in protest of tuition fee increases.
Although the video reveals that no one struck a blow, students and their families, faculty, staff, journalists, the broader community, and even the university’s chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, recognized the situation as a violent scene. It was also an unsettling one, because the perpetrators of the violence were agents of the state: two campus police officers who did their dirty deed with disturbing nonchalance, a nonchalance that indicated their actions were anticipated and approved by a higher authority, at least in general terms if not specifically for this event. In fact, someone in the university administration thought it was appropriate to send police to a nonviolent political protest armored and armed with paramilitary gear and weapons, including the canisters of pepper spray. Come to think of it, someone in the university administration thought the purchase of paramilitary gear and weapons was an appropriate expenditure for a public university, a public university that has increased student fees by more than 50% percent in the last three years. And it was, again, increased fees that in part motivated the students to assemble and seek redress of their grievances to begin with.
The UC Davis police action is a typical example of state violence, violence that is perpetrated by the state, or an institution or some other social structure, against the people the state serves. To help explain this concept, there is a handy sociological definition of state violence, originated by Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, that lends some meaning to the Davis scene. He defined violence as the cause of the difference between a person’s potential state of being and a person’s actual state of being. For example, Somalis have the potential to be well fed; instead, due primarily to failed national and global governance (the state) and secondarily to global climate change (arguably the result of the same failed governance), the actual condition for many Somalis at the moment is starvation. State violence creates that difference between the potential and the actual, it can increase the difference, and it can prevent the difference from decreasing. State violence, then, encompasses the ways that the state prevents people from achieving their potential.
If you apply this to the UC Davis scenario, you’ll find that, in the short term, the students’ potential to exercise their First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble and to petition the government for redress of their grievances was not realized: Police violence prevented them from achieving that potential. And the pepper spray (a nasty form of nonlethal crowd control that forcibly silences free speech until the symptoms wear off) increased the difference between the students’ potential state of comfortably enjoying a moment of peaceful protest and their actual state of temporary blindness, searing pain in their ears, eyes, noses, mouths, and airways, inflamed tissue, gagging and coughing, and difficulty breathing. This is state violence.
In the long term, all but the privileged elite among the students will inevitably be harmed by the student fee increases, the issue that was lost in the pepper spray debacle and an issue that brings us to something that might be less recognizable as violence: economics.
In this case, the rapid, repeated increase of public university tuition fees at CSU and UC is harming some students and risking harm to others — particularly those who are low-income, working-class and middleclass — by postponing and, in some cases, preventing them from achieving their academic potential and, consequently, their professional and personal development potential.
The fee increases also reflect a related type of economic violence: inequity in the distribution of public education funds, which compounds the existing inequitable access to public higher education and all the ramifications thereof. Students who suffer from the inequity and subsequent lack of education are more likely to experience greater degrees of under- and unemployment, lower quality housing and community amenities, and less access to the public and private social, economic, political and cultural benefits of U.S. residency and citizenship. Hence, these students are disproportionately hindered or prevented by CSU and UC from reaching their potential, compared to privileged students.
We could chalk this up to the troubling economic times, but we’d be wrong.
And those are only two examples in higher education, two among countless examples. With the amount of violence we consume on a daily basis, we should be connoisseurs, but we are not, and this void in our understanding contributes to the state’s ability to perpetrate violence against us because we too often fail to recognize it as such; hence, we do not challenge it. But gradually people are gaining awareness. The Occupy movement is testament to this. The movement is helping turn the baffled “WTF?” into a declarative “OMG — that’s, like, violence!” People are beginning to see that the state is a ready and eager perpetrator: burdening the people with debt to fund unwarranted wars and rescue multinational corporations; failing to effectively muster emergency services to rescue low-income urban residents from natural disasters; pricing public education out of reach of the non-privileged public; and assaulting those who peacefully protest such state violence.
We might imagine that the state will never abandon using violence against the people it is intended to serve — and we can hope that we’d be wrong.
Newt Gingrich is on a campaign in search of a presidency, but he’s having some trouble keeping his ambitious foot out of his mouth. Last year, his most foot-worthy faux pas was comparing a proposed Muslim community center in New York to Nazis putting a sign next to the Holocaust Museum. Meanwhile, his second ex-wife, Marianne, was giving him a bit of a boot in an Esquire magazine profile in which she reminisced about asking Newt, while they were married, how he could have given a speech on family values, while he was having an affair. She recalled his response was, “It doesn’t matter what I do. People need to hear what I have to say. There’s no one else who can say what I can say. It doesn’t matter what I live.”
This year, a clodhopper closer to the presidential throne of his dreams, Newt implanted his foot yet again. In the last 10 days, he said and repeated that our child labor laws are “truly stupid.” He suggested that children as young as, say, 9 years old, living in the poorest neighborhoods and attending failing schools where they are taught by failing teachers, should become janitors, working up to, say, 20 hours per week. According to Newt, the benefits of his proposal are that child labor “would be dramatically less expensive than unionized janitors,” whom he would fire, and the poor kids would be “empowered to succeed” as they “begin the process of rising.”
The benefits Newt did not enumerate include being able to use poor kids in poor schools in poor neighborhoods to thumb his nose at labor unions and perpetuating an underclass of menial laborers — a necessity for the continual growth of patriarchal capitalism for which Newt has a certain fondness. Newt’s proposal would also work out quite nicely for all the privileged children, who live in nice neighborhoods and attend successful schools where they are taught by effective teachers, and who are not encouraged to work as janitors, because their privileged parents’ social and professional networks will hand them spiffy jobs when they graduate from college — so they can hire the now all-grown-up and well-trained poor kids to be the janitors in their spiffy leather and chrome offices.
There are other astounding aspects of Newt’s vision for impoverished children: He even wants to do away with food stamps, although he fails to mention such specifics in his list of self-described “extraordinarily radical proposals to fundamentally change the culture of poverty in America and to give people a chance to rise very rapidly.” You can read his strategically vague proposals at www.newt.org. But for all his grand rethinking, I wonder that he failed to connect the dots between the poor parents who would lose their janitorial jobs and their poor kids who would take the jobs for “dramatically” lower wages. I also wonder that his only suggestion for the failing schools and failing teachers he mentioned was to cut janitorial expenses! Of course, it’s certainly possible that Newt just didn’t think about the words before he let them roll off his silver tongue. Compassion is not his strong suit. Besides, it is so darn hard to see privilege when you have it, and Newt has a history of letting his ambition trump his humanity.
This all reminds me of my disappointing date with Newt. Oh, not a romantic date. No, to paraphrase a classic Newt slur, I wasn’t young enough or pretty enough to show up on his arm. Rather, it was a date to meet him, ask him a clever question and capture a stellar sound bite or two. This is how it came about. …
In August 1995, Maury Stans called me. You might not know the name — and that proved to be his biggest disappointment. You see, Maury had grown old, old and sorrowful, frustrated and blind, which made writing yet another quest for vindication of his purported involvement in the Watergate scandal so damnably difficult. So difficult, in fact, that in his desperation to demand his innocence of any shenanigans as President Richard Nixon’s treasurer of the Committee to Re-elect the President, Maury had resorted to hiring a friend of a friend, an unknown leftwing feminist writer who would be me, to help him write his memoir. It was his second book, the one he hoped would definitively grant him the exoneration for which he had lusted lo the many years since the Watergate Hotel break-in splattered careers across the spit-shined political patina of the nation’s capitol. If only he could entice folks to read it. If only they would remember who he was.
With hope in his voice, Maury called me because Newt was coming to town. Maury wanted to provide his seasoned counsel to the younger man, and he thought it would do me good to meet the darling of the Republican Party. I suspected Maury also hoped to reignite his faded glory in the glow of the year’s political star. With a flick of his wrist, Newt had launched the 1994 Contract with America, toppled the Democrat’s House majority, catapulted himself into the Speaker of the House seat, and then hit the road to parlay his new book, Restoring the Dream, into future votes and aspirations.
Although his dance card was more than full, the Nixon Library was Newt’s next do-si-do and, while there, he would be privately receiving a select few, those who could be described as conservative white men with big bucks. Maury was also on the list because of his service to the party and the nation. He had been deputy postmaster general and Bureau of the Budget director for President Dwight D. Eisenhower and secretary of commerce for both Eisenhower and Nixon. And, despite Nixon’s abandoning Maury to the Watergate wolves, Maury could raise money like nobody else. In fact, he had raised the bulk of the funds to build the Nixon edifice.
Maury’s offer of an opportunity to chew the fat with Newt, to search for the human behind the elephant tie, was enticing, so I pounced on it, donned my most conservative suit, and tried to achieve a Republican coif — admittedly a lost cause. Then I schlepped through the heat and smog to Yorba Linda, California, in my not so conservative pickup with the prochoice bumper sticker, and parked among the Cadillacs that had been made mostly on foreign soil.
I approached the library half expecting screeching alarms to go off, jackbooted guards to pin me against the wall and search me for liberal contraband. But no: I wended my way innocuously through the hordes of Gingrich groupies, waiting for him to lay hands on their copies of his book. I skated through security with barely a nod from the ramrod guards, and joined Maury to help him shuffle into an intimate sitting room where a selection of the finest local Republican donors, ensconced on exquisite upholstery, eagerly awaited the Newt’s arrival.
Maury wrung his hands with the anxiety of a toppled man first scorned then ignored by the masses. A media honcho positioned his wife for the pending encounter, pulling her skirt hem down to her knees. Carl Karcher, the burger mogul who paid a $664,000 SEC fine to settle insider trading charges, handed out religious tracts with the fervor of a neophyte. I struggled to pick the winning question to pose to the guest of honor. And so we all continued to wait among whispers for the man who would remake the government in his own image.
Then the Secret Service fellows arrived, with their funny posture that made me squirm for them and those little earpieces that begged to be blown in. But still no Newt, and I could wait no longer: I raised one finger and was granted a potty break.
• • •
On the way out of the women’s room, as I adjusted the suit and turned a corner, I looked up into the pretty orbs of none other than the Newt himself.
He smiled faintly and said, “Hi,” wiping perspiration from his brow.
Newt looked hot and rushed and tired — and surprisingly vulnerable. In the flush of a Southern California August, his articulate arrogance had melted away, mumbling dark streaks down the front of his pale blue shirt. He looked as though, having returned from the political wars, that he would prefer nothing more than to climb into his latest wife’s lap and suckle his way to the presidency. If only he could, it seemed, he might regain his sense of security.
I paused to consider that such men, so dependent on women, lust for such power. Then I dumped the many erudite and pointed queries I had contemplated putting to Newt, the questions of great import that would have made him take pause and proffer a bit of pompous profundity. Instead, with the most feminist compassion I could muster, I said, “Hot day out there, eh?”
“Sure is,” he replied and scurried into the men’s room to do his thing.
Those were the only words we ever exchanged. Newt’s reception with the VIPs proved nothing more than a swift photo opportunity for major donors with checks in hand and spaces already cleared on their study walls. Maury’s moment in the Newt’s sun was only that: Newt neither sought his sage counsel nor gave him a second to offer it. Instead, Maury and his hopes were dismissed with a slap of brevity. And I deemed my compassion misspent.
It occurred to me then — as it occurs to me now — that one day Newt Gingrich will blindly shuffle behind his much younger wife into an intimate sitting room, where he will hopefully await an audience with the latest Republican Party star, who will take two seconds to pose with the man who would have been king, but couldn’t.
In honor of those who have served, Veterans Day, November 11, 2011
“When I first saw it at the dedication in 1982,” said the veteran of an undeclared war, “I thought it was a nice memorial to all the people who died.”
“But now,” and his blue eyes began to glisten faster than he could close them — to the memory of buddies and limbs lost; to the etched names of 58,272 dead warriors; to the clusters of their families, the tourists, the curious and awestruck and angry and guilt-ridden — “now I think there are too many names.”
And he fell as silent and far away as only one can, who has offered up his life and lived while others died.
But still, he and millions of others from around the world make their pilgrimages to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the United States’ Wailing Wall, a monument that has dramatically transcended its original intent. Thirty-six years since President Nixon gave up and we pulled out of Vietnam, they come with the raw emotions of grief and ambiguity and three decades of slowly evolving perspectives. And in their tumultuous wake, they leave things — things personal and symbolic, things spontaneous and enigmatic — the things that have become the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection, tangible reminders of this, and other, wars.
A frayed POW-MIA flag and a bracelet commemorating Pfc. Charles D. Chomel, USMC, declared missing in action June 11, 1967.
M&Ms, the soldier’s unmeltable treat and the wounded’s placebo.
A World War II helmet.
MPCs, the military’s scrip.
World War I unit insignia.
Short timers’ sticks, the mark of a soldier soon headed home.
A Desert Storm Silver Star given from son to fallen father.
They leave the inscrutable symbols — perhaps of camaraderie and love.
Chef Boyardee cheese pizza mix.
A miniature Starship Enterprise.
Bazooka Joe comics.
A McGovern-Shriver ’72 pin.
Stuffed animals.
A bottle of champagne.
A tricked-out Harley-Davidson.
And they leave the letters of loved ones, unresolved survivors, anonymous critics.
“I’m sorry I forgot your flower, so caught up was I in myself and my grief for Caleb. A young man today, he told me he is afraid to come to The Wall. He doesn’t know what to say to a man who’s been to war. I told him to say, ‘Thank you.’”
“Pat, your little girl is a Marine now, just like you.”
“Uttermark and I flipped a coin. … His name is on this monument. I’m alive.”
“It was a brave thing you did. It must have been really scary, but it was wrong for the U.S. to send troops off into such a hellish place.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you for your service, my Father, and for my life. I’ll do the best I can.”
“Micky, you should have zigged instead of zagged. I love you brother. Happy, LRRP.”
And the divorce decree of a soldier resigned to another casualty, “You did everything you could; it just didn’t work out.”
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection is a growing accumulation of artifacts selected by the living, giving recognition to the dead. And even more: It is a reflection of the phenomena, the vast spectrum of experiences, that were, and continue to be for so many, the Vietnam War — any war.
In this 29th anniversary year of The Wall’s dedication, still people come and still they leave the things that might give them — and perhaps the world — some peace. But most poignant and ephemeral of the artifacts they leave, are the tears shed at The Wall — for loved ones killed or still missing, for parents or grandparents never known, for lingering opposition to the war, for denial of a hero’s welcome, for fear of wars to come.
And the tears, beseeching resolution, leave sorrowful salt trails on the black granite wall, only to be rinsed away by the next rain. And then replaced again.
(My thanks to Brian Brown and the National Organization for Marriage for providing the majority of this fable’s dialogue and a significant amount of the narrative — from the last four year’s of NOM emails, media releases and website content, for example, click here …)
In 2010, California Federal Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. He determined that the ballot measure, which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman, violates the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Leaders of the anti-same-sex marriage lobby were crushed by the decision, although they continued to tilt at homophobic windmills until the final legal blow to their cause smote them impotent, along with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). But as time passed, they saw that traditional marriages were not, after all, diminished by same-sex marriages. Realizing the error of their rationale, they all trotted off to happier pursuits. All but one, that is. Brian Brown, ill-equipped for mainstream employment, struggled to redefine NOM’s mission, to reframe his marriage message, a message that would support a new cause and his continued income. And so, one day, he was found doggedly pursuing his mission along the streets of Fallbrook the Friendly Village. …
One blustery Wednesday afternoon, in a burst of unprecedented rejection, Brian Brown, president of NOM, struck down the request of a senior citizen who was seeking assistance to cross Elder Street in Fallbrook, California
“I only asked him for an arm to lean on, to step down from the curb,” said Rose Kaminski to the chubby Eagle Scout who came to her rescue. The petite octogenarian wore a mint-green polyester pantsuit and sneaks, the balls of her Peds, a perfectly matching hue. She knew she looked just lovely. “It’s a special day for me, so I’m trying to look my best. But my, oh my, that young man nearly jumped out of his skin when I asked for his help — I just had to pick up my marriage license, oy! The little nebbish, I guess he’s not used to folks being friendly. Between us, Bubele — shush, now, you didn’t hear this from me — he favors the Pillsbury Dough Boy, don’t you know.” She chuckled as she tucked a Macy’s shopping bag under one green arm and with the other hand clasped the Eagle Scout’s elbow. The poor boychick, she noticed, was devastated by pronounced acne. A little chicken soup, maybe? she wondered, as together they toddled across the street.
Meanwhile, pedestrians waylaid by Brown’s boorishness gave witness to a growing crowd that his unthinkable behavior did in fact happen, as wrong and outrageous as it was: an openly Christian man, throwing a little old lady’s harmless request into a dustbin like so many pieces of dirty paper, declaring his imperial will should trump her plea. Although, as the people chatted among themselves, no one was quite sure what that will was.
“Why would he do it?” they murmured to one another. “How could he?” And then, “Brian, Brian!” they called to him. “You must explain yourself, Brian!”
Brian considered turning tail and running like hell to his “Autumn for Marriage 2011: One Man, One Woman of Child-Bearing Age” tour bus, but he took so long to consider his exit that he was surrounded before his legs got pumping. And by then, the group was rapidly expanding, thanks to the residents of Shady Oaks Rest Home who had hit the street for their daily power walk.
Brian eyed the fomenting mass, whispered a prayer, rolled up his sleeves and said, “I’ll take your questions now.”
“How could you refuse such a benign request, Brian?” asked Cecil Adams, an adjunct professor of philosophy at Palomar Community College; although at the moment, he was moonlighting as a skateboarding pizza delivery person, a pragmatic move he would soon abandon with a modicum of nostalgia, as spring enrollment increased at the school. “All that sweet old gal wanted was a hand down the curb, Brian. And on her wedding day! Where’s your soul? Don’t you aspire to a higher plane? What gives, man?”
Brian put his right hand to his heart, NOM’s polling having indicated that 67 percent of respondents interpreted the gesture as strongly positive.
“Now, let me just preface this with my absolute assurance that I bear no ill will toward senior citizens,” Brian intoned. “I harbor no prejudice in my heart. I have senior citizens who are friends and family! Nonetheless, that woman is headed to meet her partner at Town Hall and apply for a marriage license, and that jeopardizes the definition of marriage across this great nation of ours. Senior-citizen marriage is threatening to strip millions of Americans of our core definition of marriage — of our right to traditional marriage!”
“Oh, yeah?” the philosophic pizza person asked as he passed out slices to the agitated crowd. “How so?”
“Senior-citizen marriage will undermine the institution of marriage as we’ve known it for millennia. That’s why I’m — we’re — on this bus tour — to make it clear that the people of this country will not be silenced and that activist judges who try to defend senior-citizen marriage do not have the right to impose their views on the people of this country. We need to make it clear to the Supreme Court and we need to make it clear to the out-of-control Congress. Senior-citizen marriage conflicts with marriage’s central purpose — of procreation!”
“Well, yep, she looked a bit old to have a bun in the oven.” Cecil twirled an empty pizza box on one finger and the audience politely applauded. “But you haven’t answered my question: How is senior-citizen marriage threatening to strip millions of Americans of our right to traditional marriage? That smacks of a non sequitur, man.”
“Advocates for senior-citizen marriages are threatening the definition of marriage as we know it. The sheer audacity of senior citizens, wanting to redefine marriage for everyone else, as though it’s their civil right to do so! The sheer ego mania of it is startling to the core, the ah, the very definition of marriage that is the basis of our nation, the procreational purpose that marriage is intended for, one husband, one wife, ah — procreating. You know what I mean.”
“Brian, are you speaking in tongues, man? You’re not making one iota of sense, dude.” Cecil sucked some pizza sauce from the COEXIST tie his former wife had given him for Co-parents Day.
“I know, but our polling indicates that 79 percent of respondents have a very strong positive reaction to statements about protecting their right to traditional marriage, so I’m supposed to say it whenever I get a chance — because you, too, have the right to traditional marriage and your right deserves to be protected from special interests who are trying to redefine it.”
“You take direction well, Brian. Gotta give you credit where credit is due, man. But I’m divorced, and you know senior-citizen marriages don’t hurt anyone else’s. How can you justify all this effort to oppose a problem that doesn’t exist? How can you try to stop seniors from being married? Come on now, guy! They might be a little shriveled, and there is that oldster talcum powder smell, but they’re still human beings. Don’t they deserve the same rights as the rest of us?”
“Yeah, that!” the crowd chimed in.
Brian eyed the riled folks and his sweat glands gushed. “We’re not trying to ban senior-citizen marriage, but we are against redefining marriage. And those people have civil unions at their disposal. Traditional marriage is the exclusive right of a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation. It’s what’s best for children, for families, for the nation!” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and stopped the salty flow at his chin. “It is an abomination to redefine marriage as anything else. It’s just wrong. Very wrong. And we will fight back! And we will win! Because senior citizens don’t have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us. And, and they are too old for, you know, procreation!”
The assembly, comprising a goodly number of senior citizens, drew a collective gasp and stepped back from Brian — that he was imagining them in flagrante was grossing them out. “Damn voyeur,” they whispered, exchanging winks.
“Brian, Brian, Brian!” Cecil said. “Get your mind out of the gutter! Don’t you pay attention to the stats? We are an aging population. Don’t mess with the dominant demographic’s sexuality! The Baby Boomers, man — they might be cruising into their golden years, but they’re still having plenty of nookie.”
Brian shuddered. “Eeuwwww! It’s unthinkable — senior citizens — the death knell of traditional marriage — how can they? — marriage is for pro– procreation! — unthinkable — but when I do think — Sweet, Baby Jesus! — Grams and Granny going at — you know — gyuhhcchhh! — God almighty, it’s — disgusting!!”
A low rumble burbled from the depths of the throng, and Cecil, an intuitive philosopher, leapt back from its center just as the people swarmed Brian, who disappeared amid blazing knock-off purses, rolled newspapers and well-aimed Shady Oaks water bottles.
Cecil thought about stepping into the fray to intervene, but decided to let natural law run its course. Besides, he had to get back to Pizza Hut and explain the disappearance of four extra-larges.
As he skated out of sight, the mob quickly thinned, and Rose returned with a hefty man on her arm. “Did we miss something?” she asked the stragglers.
“Not much,” said Rod “The Rod” Robertson, a retired professional wrestler and occasional birthday party clown. “Just took care of some pipsqueak senior citizenphobe.”
“That nebbish who wouldn’t help me across the street? I told you about him, Bruno. His poor mother, what a disappointment he must’ve been, what a heartache.” She patted her fiancé’s arm. “Not like my Bruno.”
“Yes, Sweetie.” Bruno gave her a reciprocal pat.
“You look just lovely today, Rose,” The Rod said, silently mourning Bruno’s success.
“Thank you, Rod. Aren’t you a mensch. See you at lunch!” Rose waved as she and Bruno strolled up the walk to Shady Oaks. “Well, it takes all kinds, don’t you know, but between us, Bubele — shush, now, you didn’t hear this from me — that young man favors the Pillsbury Dough Boy.”
“Yes, Sweetie, I’d wager he does.” Bruno had heard the story twice before, but he knew how to make an old gal feel good. He gave her a love pinch and said, “Rosie, would you like to take a little nap before the wedding, Sweetie?”
Featuring authors Sue Diaz and Cmdr. Sheri Snively
November 9, 2011, from Fallbrook’s Writers Read
Café des Artistes
103 S. Main Street, Fallbrook, CA 5:30 Doors open, supper menu available 6:00 Reading begins
In honor of our local veterans, San Diego-based writers Sue Diaz, author of Minefields of the Heart, and retired Navy Quaker Chaplin Cmdr. Sheri Snively, author of Heaven in the Midst of Hell, will read from their books, discuss their careers, and take questions from the audience.
Diaz, an award-winning journalist, will read from Minefields of the Heart: A Mother’s Stories of a Son at War. The book — a tender collection of wartime essays, a mother and son memoir, a letter full of love and compassion — is the result of Diaz’s unexpected march to war when her gentle son, Roman, enlisted in the Army in 2002 and was subsequently deployed to Iraq twice.
Snively’s book, Heaven in the Midst of Hell, was recognized with a forward by U.S. Marine General James N. Mattis, and Publisher’s Weekly wrote this about it: “Both text and photos convey the everyday details of life and death in the war zone: a menorah made of Coke cans, beanie babies piled on the bed of an Iraqi patient, smiling soldiers. Snively doesn’t offer a big-picture overview, but heaven and hell are in these personal details. From the perspective of a medical chaplain, the two sides are ‘life’ and ‘death’ rather than ‘us’ and ‘them.’”
The authors books will be available for sale and signing.
The featured authors will be preceded by open mic for poetry and prose.
For more information, contact Kit-Bacon at kbgressitt@gmail.com or 760-522-1064.
I can hear the deep thrum of the bass guitars from the rock group on the sound truck way ahead in the line of march. It resonates in my chest. They’re playing a piece I don’t recognize, with strange minor harmonies like music for the end of the world.
“Who is it?” I ask some people coming the other way.
“The Grateful Dead,” they tell me.
“Far out!” my friend says. “And we’ve already passed The Byrds and Jefferson Airplane. The best rock groups in San Francisco are part of this demonstration.”
“Everybody’s part of this demonstration,” I say, glancing around at the throng that curb to curb fills the wide street in the Haight-Ashbury district. Many are hippies, with long hair and love beads — a tribe I will soon join. They have been passing us six Los Angeles church ladies as we sit resting on a low wall for what seems like an hour — more and more people carrying signs, and chanting, “Hell no, we won’t go.” Their faces are grave, because we are protesting graves, so many American graves from the senseless Vietnam War.
October 15, 2011. Encinitas, California
But that was forty-three years ago, and today I am on my way to go with my sister Diane and her husband Dave to another protest march for a different painful issue — the recession. Here in this wealthy North County beach town, we are going to show our participation in the Occupy San Diego movement. Will it be like the old days? I hope this will be not just an exercise in nostalgia, but a useful political action.
When I arrive at my sister’s elegant house, she has squares of stiff brown cardboard and a box of felt pens ready. “Let’s make our signs before lunch,” she says. We hunker down on the floor like kindergarteners in art class and discuss the possibilities. “There are so many issues that are part of this mess,” she says. “The banks, election reform, the wars, health care, the corporations and the rich not paying their fair share… But we need to ask for something specific, something that can actually be done.”
“Yes, and we need to say it in three or four words so people passing by can get it in one glance.” Peace is always the central issue. That hasn’t changed since 1969, so I pick up a pen and print “Cut the military budget” in big letters. On the back I write “Out of Iraq and Afghanistan.” I have to think a minute about the spelling of the last word.
“Put a skull on it,” Di suggests. I have a hard time with the shape, but when I add round black eyes it looks pretty good. My sister the financial planner is more subtle; her sign says “Corporate money corrupts Congress.”
“Nice alliteration,” I comment. She starts decorating the “c’s” with triangles that look like teeth. “But where did you hear that we’re not supposed to have sticks for the signs?”
“That’s the way it was with the crowd on the news last night. I guess it’s for safety. And by the way, I read that oil combines with pepper spray to reduce the burn. Do you want to use some face cream?”
“Di, come on. This is Encinitas.”
“Well, I saw a kid get sprayed on television last night.” She’s right; I remember.
“And another thing, did you use sun screen this morning? And did you bring a hat?”
“Yes, yes. Jeepers, you’d think YOU were the big sis.”
We eat a quick lunch of cold chicken and fruit. I am anxious to get going, afraid that we will arrive after the march has departed and we won’t be able to find the others.
“Aren’t we going to wait for Dave?” I ask when she picks up her purse and her sign.
“He’ll come later, after his meeting is over,” she assures me. I ‘m surprised to find that I’m a little uneasy not to have a man with us.
When we arrive at the assembly place — the intersection of Encinitas Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway — we see that the plan is not to march anywhere, but to hold a stable occupation of all four corners. I rejoice to see that there are lots of protestors — maybe 500 — most of them in their forties or fifties, nicely dressed and holding hand-lettered signs. There can be no doubt that this is a grass-roots movement and not sponsored by any outfit rich enough to pay for professional signs. We join the group and begin holding out our slogans to the oncoming traffic. People show each other what they have written and exchange approving words and high fives. Many facets of the causes of the recession are expressed on the signs. The big placard of the tall man next to me says, predictably, “We’re mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it any more!” Another urges “Bail out people, not banks!” My favorite is an adaptation of a commercial “going out of business” sign with “America is” written in at the top, and “Politicians for sale — cheap!” added at the bottom. That is, it’s my favorite until my heart rejoices to spot an older man holding a reproduction of the iconic Mothers for Peace image: a single flower and the words “War is not healthy for children or other living things.” He and I exchange reminiscences of the Old Days, and I tell him I used to have a lapel pin with that image on it.
The crowd keeps on growing, and with it, a feeling of jubilation. The traffic passing four ways at the intersection is an ideal situation for getting our message to the most people in a short time. Cars honk approval as they pass, and we yell encouragement back at them. I am astonished at how many passers-by seem to be with us. They wave and smile and — oh joy! — flash peace signs with two uplifted fingers. In sharp contrast to my former experience in demonstrations — for peace, for civil rights, for women’s equality — there is not one ugly shout, not one mean look. Can it be that the American public, even in this conservative upper-middle-class town, is fed up and ready for action? With the guidance of the protest leaders, we begin to chant joyfully. “We ARE—the ninety-nine percent!” and “WE’VE been sold out! YOU’VE been sold out!” We cross the street with the change of light, holding our placards high; we lean out from the curb to show our messages, and the shouting and honking gets louder and louder. My sober, scientific brother-in-law Dave turns up in the crowd, having as much fun as a kid let out of school.
Then a massive red truck comes down the street and honks with a mighty air horn as he turns the corner. Laughter and cheers greet the driver. The story passes through the crowd: “His mother is standing on that corner, and she called him on her cell phone and told him to get his truck over here.” But then — “The cops have pulled him over! Let’s go protest his arrest!” A group of about a hundred hurries down the block.
“This could get ugly,” I think. I tag along at first to see what will happen, but then decide to watch from across the street like a wise coward. Soon the group straggles back. “What happened?” I ask.
“Aw, they gave the guy a ticket. I’m hoarse from yelling at the cop, but it didn’t do any good,” says a young man. I give thanks that nobody lost control and shouted an obscenity at the police and got themselves arrested. THAT would make a pretty story on the evening news. The media, I had learned, always goes for the most sensational aspect of any story. So where IS the media? The protest has been going on for two hours, and there has been no sign of interest from local TV stations. I notice one young girl taking notes and ask, “Are you the media?”
“Well, not really,” she says modestly. “I’m doing an article for my high school newspaper. Can I interview you?” So I give her my best sound bites. At last, when things are beginning to wind down, an NBC channel 7 truck arrives, and a lone cameraman sets up on one corner with a tripod. I tell him the story about the truck, but he just looks at me with a blank face and tired eyes. Later, I hear that an elderly woman sitting in a chair on the curb has been coming to this corner with protest signs for four years. When I talk with her, I find that she is articulate and informed, and has run for Congress three times, so I go back to the cameraman, point her out to him, and am gratified when he takes his mike over to interview her.
Di and I, although we are exhilarated and still having fun, are getting tired arms from holding up our signs, so we reluctantly decide to leave, but Dave is enjoying himself and elects to stay for a while longer. On the way home I feel cleansed and hopeful, but that evening when we look at the news, although it is heartening to see crowds all over the world supporting the movement, I am discouraged to see that for our little North County protest the camera has caught only one of the four street corners, making the crowd look meager. However, the elderly woman in the chair is given a good fifteen seconds on camera to make our many complex points.
But was anybody listening? Did we make a difference forty-three years ago in race relations, gender equality, ending war? How long is it going to take this time?
. . . . . . . .
Patty Campbell is a former librarian and belly dancer who lives on an avocado ranch in Fallbrook.
The Koala is a privately held, for-profit business that publishes hate tabloids for distribution on college campuses.
Visit Call Out the Koala to learn how you can help stop the hate.
Author Robert Crais started out in life as a working-class kid from Louisiana — “My family is all cops and hardhats,” he said in a recent telephone interview. Then, as a young man, he literally headed west and swiftly succeeded in making a name for himself as a television scriptwriter and producer. His story might have made a tidy Horatio Alger novella. But to the surprise of his TV-industry peers, Crais took a detour in a “weird perverse direction,” a direction that, 18 novels later, has landed his work on bestseller lists seven times and garnered him an international following for his crime thrillers, 15 of which feature private investigators Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Crais will be reading from and discussing his newest novel, Taken, at Warwick’s in La Jolla, Wednesday, January 25, at 7:30 p.m.
