Occasional heatwaves stilled the August air at the New Paltz, New York cottage where my husband Vincent Mancuso and I spent summer months from 2013 to 2019. Even the cicadas deemed it too scorching to chat.
In this year’s pandemic-induced staycation in Florida, I’m a character drifting through a Tennessee Williams play. Contrary to the George Gershwin lyric, the living is not easy. I pause to wipe my brow, even with air conditioning. Note: There is air conditioning.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

Faced with global peril, we are learning how to chill:

• We reserve the 5 o’clock hour for playing a Casio keyboard. Music soothes and awakens a sleepy part of our brains. A book of old songs suggests one way people endured the Great Depression. Cannot help but be upbeat playing the 1932 hit, I've Got the World on a String.
  Note: Within the first six notes of a session's opening tune, 1934's Moonglow, our 15-year old cat awakens to flop at our feet for treats and tunes. Treats are as predictable a motivation as the scent of tuna fish; however, she stays for the music.
• As compliant citizens, we make weekly forays for groceries to, in alphabetical order, Aldi’s, Publix, Targets or Trader Joes. Note: Aldi's has the best watermelon.
• As Democrats, we smiled more at the  party's mid-August convention - and all those decent human beings - than we had in months.
• This week, we are binge-watching Netflix's The Repair Shop. In each BBC half-hour episode, craftspeople at work in a thatched-roof shop at the Weald and Downland Living Museum greet Brits bearing broken treasures (and aching hearts). Toy restorers, art experts, tinkerers and cabinet makers work their magic, as genially as Santa's elves. In the end, treasures spring to life, prompting smiles all around. Ahh. Note: Yes, it is escapism. We're steeling ourselves with proof the broken may be fixed, even our nation, with statecraft.

Digging From America

The quarantine prompted us to order DNA test kits from Ancestry.Com. We are not alone. Today’s genealogy craze rivals the top contender for web searches: pornography.

As a guest member of Ancestry.com, I input details into my family tree gathered in the 1980s by my mother’s cousin Theodore. Sans Google, he unraveled a timeline of English ancestors to the 1600s. The gentleman’s collection of photocopies include ship manifests, birth certificates, census records, court records and Civil War enlistment records, many penned in elegant cursive style.

Curbing Enthusiasm

Listening to the memoir Moments of Glad Grace by Canadian Alison Wearing, who traveled to Dublin with her elderly father in search of genealogical records, I learned a family history trail on that island will likely come to an abrupt halt. Protestant-English rule meant the mostly Catholic Irish natives were bound to the life of farm labor, an occupation of no notoriety compared to gentry, professionals and shopkeepers. Note: In Morrisey family lore, Grandad’s family worked on a farm that bred English racing horses before he came to America in the early 20th Century and cared for horses at a riding stable by Manhattan's Central Park.

Who Counts?

This investigative pastime prompted me to notice publication of a 2020 nonfiction work, The Sum of the People, by Andrew Whitby (and David Piggott) subtitled How the Census Has Shaped Nations, from the Ancient World to the Modern Age.

According to the publisher, the author “… traces the remarkable history of the census, from ancient China and the Roman Empire, through revolutionary America and Nazi-occupied Europe, to the steps of the Supreme Court.”

The tale zig zags across time and space. It helped me picture a 1910 census taker, standing at Morrisey’s apartment door, counting the foreigner, his pregnant Mrs. and two of four toddlers who adored her before Bridget Delia of Cork died in 2014.

In what seemed routine fashion, the grieving widower would be naturalized. Note: I recall seeing a circa 1930s photo of him, riding in a Saint Patrick’s Day Parade and cutting as proud a figure as a country squire.

What Gives Pause

My Irish DNA and English DNA are common to American history. With threats of our 2020 census being cut short and suspect among foreign-born residents, the accuracy of the count and nationalities represented will be questionable and the results skewed to dent city budgets.
Note: My husband is the product of another beleaguered island: Sicily. As he time travels through Mancuso history, he too can picture his grandparents, duly counted in Manhattan, naturalized and allowed the chance to pursue a better life.

Painting Note: My big brother Ed Morrisey, an artist, lived in California until his passing in 2009. His appreciation for beauty led him to paint San Fernando Valley friends and neighbors, such as the woman in the accompanying image.

In a minute, you'll understand my intentions are pure in naming this blog.

About Guns

According to Jonathan M. Metzl, the author of the nonfiction best seller Dying of Whiteness, the American Wild West was not so wild. Frontier townsfolk preferred no display of weapons on their main streets, thank you very much. A cowboy could openly carry a weapon to town - for repair.

Fast forward to 2020 when most states grant the right to carry concealed weapons. Several states grant open carry rights. Today, a patriot can shop the veggie aisles with an assault weapon slung over his back. And, although the United States has four percent of the world's population, the country has more that 40 percent of the world's guns. Every town is a shooting range.

Who Can It Be Now?

Yet-to-be deputized Trump militia men roam the edges of our citys' ongoing protests, trigger fingers itching.  But, who can say if these disguised men are freelancers or federally deployed floaters, i.e., human capital shifted around the country like store clerks, startling department managers upon arrival? Are they United States Marshals or border patrol agents dispatched from the Oval Office? No one can say. The gunslingers and tear gassers are free to be incognito, stoking violent scenes fit for Trump's re-election campaign ads.

Freelancers purchase their camouflage from mail order hunting catalogues. Feds wear battleground gear under the ludicrous banner, "Operation Diligent Valor" funded by our tax dollars. Whatever the mission, they intimidate protesters who object to police brutality. Brutality deployed against those outraged by brutality and breeding fresh outrage. 

About Roses

In early July, PBS television's American Experience presented a two-part, four-hour documentary The Vote to mark the 100th Anniversary of the passage of women's suffrage. In the 70-year drive to win that vote, suffragettes faced counter-lobbying by women who feared its passage would topple the pedestals from which they commanded their homes. Those were the days. No suburbs, but plenty of housewives.

In Tennessee, opposing women's groups brandished roses as symbols in a War of the Roses. They cornered state politicians in a Nashville hotel lobby to show where they stood by wearing roses on their suit lapels - a yellow rose for the vote or a red rose opposing it. 

As newspaper columns covered events in polite society and "clubdom," women cultivated gardens of yellow or red. They sent Valentines laced with the symbolism. A young conservative lawmaker took the world by surprise when he followed his mother's counsel to "Be a good boy" and voted Yellow.

Chilling Parallels

The path to suffrage was not all roses. In a scene that chilled me to the core, documentary footage showed five thousand suffragettes marching in D.C., overwhelmed by 100,000 jeering men. The U.S. Cavalry rode in on horseback to rescue marchers from the assault.

Today, civilized society sees a warped version of "cavalry" show up in unmarked rental vans to shove and tear gas mothers who link arms in Portland, Oregon. These battle-ready employees of our government attack protesters as if fear for human life were not due cause to take to the streets. American moms marched to defend protesters, chanting, "Feds stray clear. Moms are here."

Fueled by Resentment

The physician Metzl subtitled his Dying of Whiteness book, How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland. In his travels, he found resentful people will deny their families health care and government programs as militantly as they bear arms. After decades of Foxy messaging - Protect the rich since one day you may be rich - they fear "Welfare Queens" profit from handouts and rob them of future wealth. 

The message is front and center for the current administration. On July 26, U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin pressed that Pavlovian button, claiming it was unfair to spend tax payer dollars to give $600 to those unemployed by the pandemic - as if they are not taxpayers afraid for their very lives.  

We're Making History

The recently deceased Honorable Congressman John Lewis supported the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and said, "A democracy cannot thrive where power remains unchecked and justice is reserved for a select few. Ignoring these cries and failing to respond to this movement is simply not an option — for peace cannot exist where justice is not served." 

It's all historic:

• When it comes to guns and brutality, stand for sanity.
• To mark the 100th Anniversary of suffrage, make the way clear to vote by mail. 
• Call on senators to support justice in policing.
• Guns N' Roses fans: Click Welcome to the Jungle.

In Brighter, Breaking News

As July ends, I'm celebrating the birth of fine artist Vincent Mancuso, shown here rendering the pastel, "Thanksgiving Table."

Happy Birthday, Mio Morito!

In places like Florida’s retirement community of The Villages, population 120,000, where twice as many people are registered as Republicans than Democrats, Republicans could fire away their views at the 19th hole of a golf course, and who would dare disagree? In 2016, Trump carried The Villages by 70%.

Unspeakable Injustice

In a dueling demonstrations in June, a Villages pro-Trump golf-cart motorcade to mark his birthday clashed with a memorial demonstration for black Americans we've seen on video-tape being killed by police. Unspeakable injustice loosed tongues in that white enclave. One woman pulled a Tiananmen Square move to block the birthday parade. People yelled.

Online, some Villages’ Republicans reportedly deliberated about counter measures if the community’s Democrats dared to hold their own golf cart motorcade. According to The Daily Beast, they would reconnoiter in advance of such a motorcade and throw roof nails on the path. One commentator pointed out everyone used the path, so everyone would be suffering flat tires. Oh. Talk about teed up.

Brainless Storms

The Villages-News claimed the birthday motorcade attendees represented less than one percent of residents. The community’s other 69% of Trump voters may have been golfing.

Yet, that online brainless storm about a roof-nail offensive is indicative of wrongheadedness across the country. As a Boomer, I thought by now we'd be the wiser. If people of this militant mindset even acknowledge the data on the spread of the pandemic, they shrug off the rise as hitting a vulnerable population. And success in reducing the outbreak with social distancing and mask-wearing - is not provable. So, wearing a mask signals political party affiliation and stifles freedom. 

Ah, Freedom!

One sunburned young beachgoer interviewed on TV Memorial Day weekend said it was his family’s business if they got sick. “My family will take care of it.”

Impressive. Home pandemic services. His family must have its own hospital, ventilators and staff. M95 masks? And disinfectant wipes? That is privilege.

Fox News 19th Hole

To end a month dominated by peaceful protests in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and around the world, Laura Ingraham fired away on Fox News' 19th hole with countermeasures against the “riots.”

“You must be willing to suit up for this battle,” she concluded. “In school board meetings, town council meetings, maybe even a parent/teacher conference and, of course, state and federal elections. It is time to do or die!”

Ingraham got carried away. Her demographic has not attended a parent-teachers conference in decades. They do vote. It is an audience seemingly disposed to scare tactics broadcast or dog whistled to them and ready to suit up. But this audience will not acknowledge the wrong being done to blacks right before our nation's eyes, whether for eight minutes and 46 seconds on a city street or in 20 rounds fired into the apartment of a young black EMT worker.

Dimmed by Human Tears

To calm things down, how about we hold vigils?  Like the violin vigil for a slain 23-year old masseuse – violinist in Colorado. Ah, maybe not, after seeing the video of police storming it. The tear gas stung and the violinists performed, “Killing Me Softly.”

The country seems to have careened from the vision of spilled human blood to historic human folly. Anyone aghast about the removal of confederate statues should read a New York Times opinion piece: You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument

The author wrote: "The black people I come from were owned and raped by the white people I come from. Who dares to tell me to celebrate them?"

The effects of a slavery mentality is the point. With tear gas, brute force and a siege mentality, America the Beautiful’s alabaster cities are dimmed by human tears.

"History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again."

                  Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning

In the 1980s, I worked on the team that produced a 12-part educational video series on Contemporary American History for Guidance Associates, Inc* - From Cold War to Hostage Crisis: 1945 to 1981. We collected and assembled the sights and sounds of 36 years in human affairs; footage depicting war, Cold War, progress, fights for rights, cultural changes and myriad shocks that reverberate to this day.

As scriptwriter, I was surprised I had to convince the team to include a segment about the space program. Like millions of my contemporaries, I had followed the nail-biting first launches, fearing for astronauts and joining with Mission Control teams to exhale deeply in celebration or in dashed hopes.

Meh!

In the video production meetings of the 1980s, sticklers for earth-bound events voiced skepticism that space exploration would mean much in the scheme of things. One expert shrugged, “How long will people remember Tang?”

I presented a list of innovations rating a longer-shelf life than powdered orange drink. The moon landing segment made it into the mix.

By the way, today the list of innovations familiar to consumers includes:

• Camera phones
• CAT scans
• LED lights
• Athletic shoes
• Water purifiers
• Dustbusters
• The Jaws of Life
• Wireless headsets
• Laptops

Big Blue Marble

In his book, A Crack in the Edge of the World, Simon Winchester maintained that our first view of the Big Blue Marble altered humankind forever. Other than those who hold to the Flat Earth Theory, we would never be the same.

That achingly beautiful vision and the reality that "You are here" transformed our understanding to the core – from the influence of shifting tectonic plates on earthquakes to paradigm shifts concerning pollution. Seeing Earth ushered in the environmental movement and Earth Day. Children recited the mantra, “Give a hoot. Don’t pollute,” and whole nations undertook to repair the damage from runaway industrial activity.

What We  Have Seen

I’ve witnessed launches with my equally space-smitten husband, Vincent Mancuso. We saw, heard and felt two earth-shaking shuttle launches from mere miles away and watched as shuttles disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean. Clear across the state, we stood one pre-dawn on a St. Petersburg fishing dock in 2005 to see the orange glow of a rocket propelling the Cassini spacecraft on its mission to Saturn. In December 2017, we sat on Coca Beach watching a re-usable SpaceX Falcon 9 booster rocket return to Earth, landing - as graceful as a ballerina - on the site called Oh Course I Still Love You. Our visits to Kennedy Space Center have the aura of pilgrimage, minus the kneeling.

A Banner Day and Dark Night

May 30, 2020 saw a launch of two men from American soil to the International Space Station. The astronauts soared as SpaceX and NASA engineers in the command center conducted their mission in pandemic masks. These men and women represent our diverse society working under a global threat, showing what humans achieve together when educated and motivated by visions of a bright future.

On this same day, recording ongoing outrage at police brutality, cameras rolled as peaceful city residents and rampant militants faced police dressed like Darth Vader troopers. Neighbors came forward in the aftermath to sweep up the broken glass. The nation's Tweeter thumbed about "thugs," warned of siccing "most vicious dogs" on the crowd gathered before the White House, and asked if his supporters would come make it, "MAGA NIGHT." 

The Next Script

Plenty of 21st Century film exists to show eight years of relative progress sandwiched between horrific events, the latter threatening one giant leap backward for humanity. The next educational video script may begin, "With all due apologies for the past, here is what happened to bring us this volatile era. Like humans who came before you, do with it what you will." 

One Resource:  On the Pulse of Morning

* Guidance Associates, Inc.

For a quarantined graduate of the Class of 2020 - whether eighth grader or doctoral student - hurling a mortar board cap or tam into the air may seem quite pointless. But, I'm curious to learn how educational institutions will celebrate their achievements virtually.

The lack of traditional ceremony is one of a million shards of our kaleidoscopic reality that shifted once officials admitted we had a global pandemic on our hands and better wash those hands and go home. Home schooling, food shopping like hazmat techs, loss of jobs and a vision of the future throws us off balance, too.

Courageous Lives  

While safely ensconsed at home, we are humbled by the sight of courageous lives as they appear on our television screens – doctors, nurses and first responders running toward gravely ill and infectious people, some rescuers dying for want of protective gear. We listen to experts sorting Covid-19 data based on a dearth of testing and pleading in a daily drumbeat for tracking devices to move us beyond social distancing and protect personal privacy. 

Lives at Stake

Even while turning off quacks like Alex Jones selling bad medicine and campaign rallies from the White House Press Room pushing lethal treatment options, we fear snake oil will be tested by true believers.

Naysayers dismiss wearing face masks as the province of “smug liberals.” How can anyone see my expression if I wear a face mask? I'd call my expression outraged or incredulous or law-abiding. I recoil from the snarling faces of those who think aiming assault weapons at our heads ends the pandemic dilemma. 

Lives Worth Living

Such is our troubling time. Fortunately, we can Google old commencement speeches and consider the ideas expressed by notable stars in our galaxy, meant to encourage graduates to go forward into the unknown. Time to roll out four of my favorites:

Meryl Streep, Barnard (2010)

"I can assure that awards have very little bearing on my own personal happiness. My own sense of well-being and purpose in the world. That comes from studying the world feelingly, with empathy in my work. It comes from staying alert and alive and involved in the lives of the people that I love and the people in the wider world who need my help."

J. K. Rowling, Harvard University (2008)

"I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged."

Aaron Sorkin, Syracuse University, 2012

“Decisions are made by those who show up. Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world. Don't ever forget that you’re a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day: civility, respect, kindness, character. You’re too good for schadenfreude, you’re too good for gossip and snark, you’re too good for intolerance — and since you're walking into the middle of a presidential election, it’s worth mentioning that you’re too good to think people who disagree with you are your enemy. … Don’t ever forget that a small group of thoughtful people can change the world. It’s the only thing that ever has.”

Barbara Kingsolver, DePauw University, 1994

“It’s not up to you to save the world. That’s the job of every living person who likes the idea of a future. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and give you one little piece of advice, and that is, like the idea of a future. Believe you have it in you to make the world look better rather than worse seven generations from now. Figure out what that could look like. And then if you’re lucky, you’ll find a way to live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.”

Time on Our Thoroughly Washed Hands

Thinking of remarkable human beings soothes the spirit; so I pencil that search in my Outlook calendar and read about lives well lived. In March 2018, I wrote of women who inspired me, first hand knowledge of much that is good in the world. On Being a Woman - 32 Facets of Herstory  

For now, fingers crossed for the welfare of the thousand cadets of the United States Military Academy's Class of 2020 as they follow the orders of their Commander-in-Chief and assemble at West Point for his commencement stump speech. I will also busy myself like the army of mask-makers around the globe. With a look toward a brighter future, I'll fashion my mask to read VOTE 2020.

With trusted news sources, medical experts, public servants and late-night comedians broadcasting from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, we are privy to a backdrop of private book collections and their organizing principles.

I find such unexpected glimpses illuminating. As Henry David Thoreau said, “It’s not what you look at that matters. It is what you see.”

• The many books on CNN’s Dana Bash’ shelves are as tightly packed and ramrod straight as you might expect. The supremely professional journalist appears with nary a lock of hair out of place or a thought ill considered. Stacks yet to read attest to her inquiring mind.
• By contrast, rumpled medical experts, tipping back in swivel chairs, tend to live and let live with sliding stacks of books and manila folders or hunch before rows of matching medical tomes. No small feat trying to save humanity.
• Former Acting Labor Secretary in the Obama Administration, Seth Harris, interviewed on MSNBC, has narrow bookcases behind his high-backed chair. The shelves hold thickish books. I figure the books are crammed with statistics about working Americans; that number sinking when 3.28 million filed jobless claims.

Literary Voyeur

For comic relief, I watched TV’s Seth Meyer’s segment about the miracle which D.J. Trump envisions – packing all the churches on Easter Sunday – perhaps while he slips away for a celebratory round of golf and a “TOLD YOU SO!!!!” mean tweet.

While relishing 16 minutes to laugh out loud, I tilted my head to read what titles I could of the books lining Seth’s wall case. Lo and behold, Seth still has The Thorn Birds.

Everybody had a copy of the 1977 blockbuster by Australian author Colleen McCullough. By the turn of the last century, libraries offered dusty dozens of the book in their sale tents, tossed in with Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Erich Segal’s Love Story.

With each move of a lifetime, I’ve donated boxes of books to libraries. Still, I check what remains in my bookcase for old nuggets I treasure or overlooked.

Treasure

I spot a yellowed paperback of the 1959 comic science fiction, The Sirens of Titans, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Having read the tale more than once, I recall his sense of irony and marvel at his playful mind; this after enduring the horrors of World War II. He died in 2007 (or scrambled aboard a golden spaceship bound for his version of Paradise).

Vonnegut would grasp the absurdity of a carnival-sideshow president running the country like his dysfunctional family business. It is priceless - or soon will be. Vonnegut might even kick in a few bucks to promote any grand America Is Risen rally.

The author of Catch 22, Joseph Heller, who nailed the profiteering and insanely indifferent character of Milo Minderbinder, would get this mercenary president. He could have seen Trump coming (or not seen him), in Major Major Major Major, a character who slithers out the window to escape a buck landing on his desk.

Going, Going ...

Now what?

• I’m all for escaping into books and lingering over the mastery of my idols.
• I’m all for diving back into the first draft of a fiction manuscript when I’m not watching the news.
• I’m all for catching glimpses of what admirable people read, whether to extract a clue (as in Seth - who knew?) or affirmation. These people are in the crosshairs more than I, trying to guide us through an otherworld.

Note: A report from an infectious disease professor at Johns Hopkins University, passed along to me in an email, lists avenues of virus contagion. For instance, if you, "use a feather duster, the virus molecules float in the air for up to 3 hours, and can lodge in your nose."

For new-time’s sake, I’ll revisit the 61-year old Sirens … and when the all-clear sounds for Covid-19, I’ll dust.

It’s a playground yelp when a bully shoves a kid off a swing. Children grow up learning to be more or less adept at handling bullies, whether by intrigue, insurrection, passive resistance or going along to get along. Woman, scorned for resistance, are called, “Nasty.”

Where We Stand

A dozen years after the United Nations instituted International Women's Day on March 8, 1975, American women who historically succeeded in exercising their power earned their own month – March. Taking the name literally, we've gathered under banners to defend a civil society (at least our version of it). Some protest with hefty pocketbooks. Some break presumed physical barriers, entering male-dominated occupations, the military and sports. Women are still standing, many of us in new places.

Lip Service

Still, the Democratic Party's presidential debates seemed to pay lip service to women candidates; that apparently because the woman who ran in 2016 only got three million more votes than the man selected by the Electoral College with a 77,000-vote edge. According to The New York Times, that convoluted reality is a cautionary tale to Americans longing to dump that chump as he rewards interest group pledging to see he stays put, come hell or come hell. We've already got the high water.

Worried Yet?

With so many glad-handing him, the chump isn't worried about how to control a coronavirus pandemic - so much as the clobbering of the stock market. His Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, opined China's epidemic would boost our economy. His gadfly of a Florida congressman, Matt Gaetz, hangs out in the United States House of Representatives wearing a gas mask. He's such a gas. Seems the best idea originating in the White House is: Beef up the border wall. Such thinking seems to rely on a belief in a Flat Earth. These people are in charge.

Unbridled

Interesting to learn in the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raps on the White House door to drop off lists of “disloyal” public servants and preferred candidates for key positions. Ginni Thomas might not have much agency without her Clarence; but she wields it with no thought to propriety. Such a quaint concept in unbridled times.

Bridled

Bridled women recoil from the 20th Century version of feminism to embrace their reproductive civil rights; this at a time when Senate Republicans sideline 400 House bills, yet force to a vote the, “Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act” termed “an event that is exceedingly rare, occurring when the unborn is not viable outside the womb,” according to The New York Times. The “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” prohibits the 1.6 % of abortions scheduled after the 20th week of pregnancy. This law is proposed despite scientific dispute of the pain claim and the undisputed non-viability of a fetus.

Grace Under Pressure

In a world so fraught with power plays, I look with amazement at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She can shake her manicured finger at any attempts to box her into a place called hate. Celebrating her 80th birthday in March, she has navigated in unhinged Washington, D.C. to usher in the “forever impeachment” of an unfit president. Wow! Republican 2016 presidential candidates (15 of them men) couldn’t stop his takeover of their party and are left to cower at the prospect of his mean tweets. Not Nancy.

Watching Them Swing 

Domineering powers swing to extremes. My agency as one human being to share these observations with you, to march, to work the Democratic Party phone bank and vote in November seems unequal to the task of resisting the bullies. To that extent, they are the bosses of me. 

Left unchecked, as William Butler Yates predicted in 1918, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

One ray of hope: Voters who showed up on Super Tuesday, in one state more than voted in 2016!

That's big. I think big enough for us to stand up to a bully.

This being February, I wonder if most people I know have a fond memory of a mixed-race friendship, if not a current relationship they value. Is there such a friendship in your experience to give you pause?

As a teenager, my most intriguing traveling buddy was an unflappable 16-year old girl named Pat Hill from Harlem, New York City. I say unflappable because she was the only black student in a Catholic girl’s high school in the early 1960s and appeared no worse for wear. In the cafeteria, by the lockers, in the gym, in the classroom, Pat held herself with Zen-like poise, impressive for anyone navigating their teens. 

Pat and I connected as fellow travelers because we dated guys attending a Catholic boy’s high school in Mount Vernon, New York, teammates on a varsity basketball team.

Makeup 

During the basketball season, Pat and I met at the bus stop after school, hiking up our pleated uniform skirts well above the knees. As we headed for a game, we sat in the back of the lurching bus for a long ride, applying eye shadow, liner, mascara, blush and lipstick and coaxing our hair to heights that would never pass muster during school hours. A pretty girl of few words, Pat could issue a warning shot to any guy coming on to us by lifting her artfully curved eyebrow. Most guys knew enough to "read the brow" and back off.

Royalty 

Once we arrived at the Mount Vernon high school, Pat and I shared another unique experience. We strode onto the basketball court like royalty, acknowledged with whispers and nods by those in the know about our elevated girlfriend status. They made way for us to climb up into the bleachers to sit among the other nobility, a.k.a. steady girlfriends of the team's players. There, as the announcement of players' names ricocheted from wall-mounted speakers, we clapped for our boyfriends in the possessive manner of steadies. We might as well have been on an American Bandstand field trip, minus Dick Clark. 

As the clock ran out and the scoreboard racked up points or didn't, we stomped and clapped and cheered to the squeak of sneakers turning on the wooden court and referee whistles sending players to the foul line. The official cheer that sticks in my mind (though it may have been for another boyfriend and another team) was, “Hey, Red. Hey, Black, You look so good to me. Het, Hey, Hey, Red, Hey, Black…” Whatever the lusty cheer, our experience proved exhilarating.

Socializing

After a game, we’d wait outside the locker room for our boyfriends and all head to a pizza parlor. We squeezed into a booth where we nibbled at perilously stringy cheese slices and sipped our Pepsi's, being of that generation. We listened to post-game talk until the boyfriend-girlfriend connections sparked and put an end to locker room chatter. At that point, we all could have been strangers on the same bus.

On the one occasion I visited Pat’s home, I sensed her parents didn’t quite know what to make of me, so rare were such encounters between the races. It seemed we began with an awkward etiquette that precluded revealing real opinions. Revelation came over the course of an afternoon. Trust felt merited.

Leaving their beautifully decorated brownstone near the north end of Central Park, I wondered why anyone had the gall to look down on Harlem and all its black residents. The Hill family had achieved more than most of my neighbors. I figured such snobbery was borne of a lack of experience. 

Half a Century Later

Over the years, I’ve treasured such friends of the road I met at a New York university when earning a masters and other friends in New York, California and Florida workplaces, particularly in Information Technology, where race is of no consequence behind the screen. In each case, we had the benefit of shared experiences on which to base a relationship.  

Still, for the most part, I’ve lived in predictable real estate silos, some exurban and far removed from predominantly black neighborhoods. Church relationships rarely involved the mixing of races - save New Year’s Eve celebrations at Manhattan’s egalitarian Riverside Church. In my small Florida city, I attend exercise classes at the YMCA with women and men of all races, have sung in choruses with black fellow classical-music aficionados and connect with people of disparate neighborhoods when making phone calls during Democratic political campaigns. Progress, considering the divide existing between races since 1619 with the landing of the first slave ship.

Thinking It Through 

In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, the author describes how humans are prone to make a decision "in the blink of an eye" about whether an encounter with a stranger is safe. 

He reports that when white people in a study were shown numerous photos of accomplished black individuals such as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, their attitudes toward blacks changed for the better, compared to the wariness they described after seeing numerous photos of blacks engaged in criminal activity. When all you notice produces a sense of wariness, the blink of an eye tells you to be on guard.

In The Body: A Guide for Occupants, by Bill Bryson, the author said racial differences can be narrowed down to "a sliver of epidermis."... human skin's reaction to sunlight. "Biologically, there is no such thing as race."

Thought: Those of us who've experienced mixed-race friendships - in school, sports, church, work, the military - can mark a personal Black History Month by recalling how exhilarating feels to be with a friend.

The screensaver that popped up on my workplace computer each morning from 2010 to 2014 was an image of the Marina Bay Sands, a world-class hotel in Singapore. Each workday, I saw the 56-story hotel’s three towers lift its infinity pool into the sky - like three brawny pals hoisting a longboat overhead.

As an ardent swimmer, I’d picture myself stepping into the pool, tightening my googles over my eyes and setting off across the sky pool’s 150 meters. With a downward-facing, freestyle stroke, I’d turn my head to the right with every other breath to glimpse city skyscrapers and bay and, with a backstroke on my return, I’d be one with the sky. I have practice in the latter since swimming the first of thousands of laps in the pools of sunny St. Petersburg, Florida.

Until I retired from a career as a writer in a corporation, I logged on to peer at that mesmerizing screensaver.

Although my husband, artist Vincent Mancuso, and I are globe trotters, serendipity must intervene if I am to stick my painted toes into the pool. The hotel’s $437 per night best rate is daunting and would represent an historic stretch for our travel budget. And, there's the matter of getting to and from Singapore.

Still, should the universe conspire for our good, we could justify a one-night stand on the basis of a decade-old desire. We have noticed merry happenstance often materializes to drop us off on distant shores.

And, if my bold toes never find their way into that pool, I may console myself that the swim occurred in my mind’s eye every day in a Florida office cubicle because I had happened upon that enchanting image.

       *  *  *

View a brief video of the sky pool at the Marina Bay Sands

Corroborating evidence:

A Passion
by Reggie Morrisey (circa 2010)

I swim beneath
the setting moon,
lap by lap,
put in the yards.
Despite what err
a day will bring,
a client's groan?
a boss' bark?

I swim beneath
the rising stars.
The day is gone,
the office left.
What's done is done.
It's made its mark.
I shake off
shivers of regret.

And here beneath
the mid-day sun,
I close my eyes.
I shield my skin.
My mind is calm.
My heart beats strong.
As long as I may
have my swim.

       *  *  *

Gabriele, our esteemed yoga instructor, asked the class what we’d been doing with the decade.

Faced with the week's internet reminders of 2010s’ earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, manmade disasters, epidemics, brutality, mass shootings, war and more war, my first thought was a 1977 lyric by the Bee Gees: “Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin' alive, stayin' alive.”

By accident of geography, none of 2010s’ tragic events destroyed my life or the life of my husband, Vince Mancuso, as they have devastated so many others. Both of us have experienced the loss of loved ones. We moved forward, steeled by our memories and gratitude. By instinct, we’ve managed to avert self-induced disasters.

Steps to Buying Time

“Stayin Alive” is classic rock we are likely to hear at the YMCA in 45-minutes of Silver Sneakers exercise, a weekly habit for half the 2010s. Then, too, doctors who insist on periodically checking “under the hood” do avert catastrophe, and Vince and I do fall into line, this thanks to health insurance.

Dodging Dubious Awards

So far, we dodged being named candidates for the Darwin Award, a mortifying distinction for, “improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it in a spectacular manner!”

• One 2019 Darwin Award went to the rhino poacher who snuck into an African preserve only to be trampled by an elephant and eaten by a lion.
• A more sobering 2018 cautionary tale: “Man suffers a fatal heart attack after getting his head stuck beneath an electric footrest at the cinema while retrieving his cellphone from the floor.” (Given our 2019 obsession with Tuesday $5 movies and bafflement in adjusting the theater’s recliners in the dark, I see how this could happen. Resolution: Bring flashlight on Tuesdays.)

Staying Positively Alive 

Aside from mindful yoga breathing, we’ve kept spirits lifted by exercising the muscle memory of a positive attitude - all rotten current-events to the contrary. We keep discovering friends of the road who share a zest for life and bring common sense, laughter, music, creativity and hope where they go.

Facing the Noun Dilemma

At this year’s St. Pete Festival of Reading at the University of South Florida, we heard humorist Dave Barry, for decades the country’s most widely syndicated columnist, confess a simple truth of aging. When Barry hit 70, he noticed word slippage. “The nouns are the first to go.”

How easy to relate, what with dinner conversations cloaked in mystery: “Remember the guy we met at that restaurant a while back when we were with what’s her name?”

Serving up nouns has become as common a courtesy in our house as passing the potatoes, except I’ve gone low carb this year; so it’s more like passing the riced cauliflower.

Feeling Energized in Nanoseconds

All too brief summer days up North with my granddaughter and grandson energize, especially when we swim together. I also was touched to see how tenderly the tween and teen welcomed home their first kitten. And, watching them for the first time venture into Manhattan, more than once shoved and elbowed into a packed city bus, was a study in nonchalance, experiences they later shrugged off as, “Cool.”

Going Boldly

Henry David Thoreau said, "Proceed confidently in the direction of your dreams and endeavor to live the life you imagine, and you will meet with a success unknown in common hours."

I found Thoreau 's words to be as true as warnings to beware of the world.

With this in mind, Vince and I boarded trains in foreign cities in the 2010s: Dublin, Cork, Paris, Barcelona, Perginon, Venice, Florence, Milan, the Alps and Copenhagen. Love those highspeed trains. Love the reflexes that kick in when entering crowded train stations in foreign cities swirling with a clockwork precision. I thank Grand Central Station, my first love, for honing those survival reflexes.

What started as dabbling in Caribbean cruises led to Atlantic crossings when our infinitesimal selves could reflect on our origins. A recent week on the East Coast of Florida led to more reflection, standing on the beach beside crashing waves as the pointed nudges of a warm wind mocked our attempts to balance in a yoga stance.

A Trifling We Go

Noticing how trifling we are to the waves and wind seemed essential to grasping we are here. “Here” is as wild and terrifying a reality as it is precious. Approaching the 2020s, we're "stayin," however long, in awe.

As Mentioned:

Gabriele Ulrike Stauf, Ph. D. and Registered Yoga Teacher