Category Archives: Culture

THE GRAND OPENING

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by Kent Ballard

Author’s note: Every word of this is true.

One of the drawbacks to rural life is the lack of big name entertainment. When I was seven years old, in 1960, I realized it was pretty unlikely that Soupy Sales or Steve Allen would ever make a public appearance in a corn field near me. Live entertainment usually consisted of playing baseball with my dog or riding Old Mary, our Holstein, around in the barn lot.

One day while watching the afternoon cartoons on our ancient Philco, I was astonished when the host announced that he was going to make a public appearance at a new furniture store opening in the little town near our farm. There would be sing-alongs, magic tricks, and a free treat for every boy and girl in attendance.

The host was a nice man named Happy Harry, and he was immensely popular with all of the local children. He reported for duty every afternoon in a crisp white sailor’s suit and cap, played passable guitar, and best of all, ran lots of cartoons. He opened his show with a warm smile and a cheerful song, and he closed it with the admonition for all of us “good little sailors” to mind our moms and dads and say our prayers at night.

Being a farm kid, I had never seen a real celebrity before, and this would be my first. I knew Happy Harry was a star because I had seen him on TV. That was what I kept telling my mother as she loaded me into our ’58 Ford on the big day. I was going to see my hero. And get a prize!

He was to appear at noon. We got there twenty minutes early and found about a hundred other kids and their mothers packed tightly around a rickety-looking platform. My Mom wanted to make sure I had a good view so she started trying to cram me forward. She succeeded only in wedging me in between other mothers who were trying to cram their kids ahead. It was a hot day and they smelled funny.

Noon came. Noon went. No Happy Harry.

By 12:30, the crowd was making its displeasure pretty vocal. The store manager made a few lame excuses, reassured everybody that there would be prizes and fun galore, then hastily departed the stage.

A little after 1:00, the crowd was soaked in sweat and openly hostile when Happy Harry lurched onto the platform. He had about three days’ growth of beard. His sailor suit—so spotless and creased on TV—was rumpled and stained. His hair was sticking out at odd angles from under a greasy swabbie’s cap planted far back on his head, and he was drunker than any human being I would see for the next fifteen years.

He mumbled something about being late, swayed to and fro silently for a moment, then launched into a rambling and largely unintelligible story about Popeye, who he referred to as his “ol’ drinkin’ buddy.” He paused in mid-sentence a couple of times to leer wickedly at some of the younger mothers and mutter under his breath.

Bear in mind that this was a very conservative rural community, and that this took place in 1960. Some of the mothers, shocked, dragged their protesting children away and swore to write Harry’s sponsors. Others marched into the store for a confrontation with the manager. But most of us, parents and children alike, stood in open-mouthed amazement as Happy Harry picked up his guitar and invented a new set of lyrics to his theme song, which he howled loudly while twisting and gyrating like Elvis.

Happy Harry then picked up a box of magic tricks, stared at it curiously for a moment, and sat it back down without a word. He was looking pretty bad by then; pale, sweating profusely, and unable to focus his eyes.

As kids often do when they find someone in a predicament, we turned utterly vicious and began taunting him and booing. My strongest memory of the day is of an older kid yelling, “Hey, Harry! What’s your REAL name? Tell us your REAL name, Harry!”

Happy Harry’s face turned purple with fury and his bloodshot eyes actually frightened me. “Happy Harry IS my real name!” He bellowed maniacally, “My first name’s ‘Happy’ and my last name’s ‘Harry’!” This was received with catcalls and squeals of derisive laughter. I have no idea why this is so vivid in my memory after fifty-four years. I guess it never occurred to me that Happy Harry may have, in fact, had another name. I was to learn much that day.

He attempted to regain control by slurring, “Hey kids, who wants a prize?” This quieted us for a moment until he held up a small bag of balloons. Obviously, he had balloons enough for only a fraction of the children present. There was a rush for the stage and the little kids in front were being mashed in the process. Happy Harry panicked and threw the balloons towards the rear of the crowd, a grave tactical error. The crush of children tried to reverse direction instantly and there was a stampede. Many children—including yours truly—were knocked down and trampled. While kids were crying and mothers were screaming, Happy Harry, wild-eyed and literally drooling, picked up a thick stack of publicity photos and threw them at everybody, cursing humanity in general and children in particular as he did so. The hapless store manager and a couple of burly employees rushed up onto the stage and grappled with Harry, giving him the bum’s rush down the steps and into the back door of the new store.

To the best of my knowledge, there were no lawsuits filed. (This was 1960, remember.) Happy Harry’s show remarkably continued for another year or so, then he was replaced by another, less memorable host. The local gossips in our community kept the telephone lines busy with lurid details about the grand opening, and the new store eventually went bankrupt.

For some time afterward, I was a major celebrity among my friends in the second grade who didn’t go to the store opening. They listened with rapt attention over and over as I described the “riot,” and within two weeks the story contained squad cars full of state troopers who, in desperation, turned police dogs and fire hoses onto the mob in order to quell the disturbance while Happy Harry fired a pistol wildly into the air…

Television has changed since those days, and not all for the better. Live TV is almost unheard of, and children’s shows rarely acknowledge the delight a child enjoys when watching an adult caught making outrageous mistakes. Kids do that all the time. Seeing grownups in a less than perfect light often has a reassuring effect. Perhaps, the kid will think, maybe I’m not so bad after all…

And that might be the best lesson we could teach them.

Looking back, that was one of the happiest afternoons of my life, even if I didn’t get a balloon. If I could meet Happy Harry now, I’d shake his hand and thank him.

But I damn sure wouldn’t by him a drink.

SOUTH OF THE BORDER: PT. 1

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Sue and I have been to Mexico a half-dozen times over the past twenty years. Before we go people always warn us about horrible healthcare, kidnappings, drug cartels, pickpockets, and murder. Although these things can occur, they do much less frequently than people believe and we’ve never had a speck of trouble.

For example, fear of the Mexican health system doesn’t carry much weight. According to Felicia Knaul, Director of the Harvard Global Equity Initiative, “As of April of 2012, every Mexican, regardless of their socioeconomic situation, has access to the financial protection in health that shields them from facing the terrible choice between impoverishment and suffering or even death.”.

What never hits the news is that thousands of Americans retire to Mexico because of its healthcare system, which is of high quality and low cost.

Be nice if we could say the same about here.

Truth is, for many reasons that only begin with immigration issues, most Americans have a distorted view of our neighbor. One that really only sees Mexico as home to beach resorts, and a jump-off for illegal migrant workers.

Mexico is so, so much more.

It’s the experience of visiting a country that had multiple cultures coalesce into an exciting, often mind-blowing blend. A blend that includes the beliefs, customs, accomplishments and esthetics of past Mesoamerican empires with cultures thousands of years old, Spanish rule, Catholicism, land grabs, and revolutions. For example: On one of our trips we visited San Cristobal de las Casas, a mountaintop city considered Cristobalthe “cultural capital” of the state of Chiapas.

Here we saw glimpses of ancient Mayan culture as well as the city’s Spanish influences. We visited Casa Na Bolom museum, an anthropological center dedicated to the protection of the Lacandon Maya and the preservation of the Chiapas rain forest.

It was outside the Center when Jake and I made our first indigenous friend. Jake was just learning to read, sitting in the courtyard studying his book. I don’t remember its title but the cover picture showed a sled dog in snowy Alaskan terrain. A local resident was entranced. He had never before seen snow. Jake saw the amazement in his eyes—so much so that he offered the man the book to keep. A couple of days later we saw him carrying his textiles on his back while tightly grasping the book in his hand. When he noticed us, he rushed over and leafed through the pages, excitedly showing us each of the pictures. It was a sweet, sweet moment.

P’atzcuaro, located in the state of Michoacán (home of the amazing Monarch butterfly migration), was founded in the 1320s. After the Spanish conquest, this beautiful mountain/lakeside town briefly became the capital of New Spain. History moved on, which might have been a good thing for Patzcuaro’s indigenous population, given the cruel, relentless domination by the Spanish.

patzz1Instead, Lake Pátzcuaro became the area where Pátzcuaro’s first bishop Don Vasco de Quiroga (known as Tata or father) ignored the Spanish demand to enslave the rebellious native population. As an alternative, he encouraged a system of town-based, self-created craft specialization for economic survival in this Brave New World. Those specializations still remain and make the region around the lake home to some of the IgnatioWithCopper1most beautiful crafts in Mexico.

Walk into Santa Clara de los Cobres and you hear the sounds of hammers beating copper into beautiful plates, vases, and table tops. Move on to Capula for intricately painted pottery. Lace from Aranzo, and ceramic devil creatures come from Ocumicho-to name just a few.

This is not a country of sombreros and machete-swinging San migueldesperadoes as so often portrayed. In fact, San Miguel de Allende is home to 12,000 to 14,000 US expatriates and retirees out of a population of about 80,000. Not an insignificant number. Its marketplace is filled with shops owned by some Americans as well as Mexicans. There we had an apartment on a hill above the city center and at night the entire town looked like wondrous jewel.

But for all St. Miguel’s beauty we prefer areas with fewer Americans. So on that trip we also spent time in nearby Guanajuato.

Guanajuato is not a jewel-like city. Capital of the state with the same name, there’s no aesthetic comparison to San Miguel de Allende. It’s a bustling town located in a narrow valley. Many of its streets run underground through tunnels built centuries ago as attempts to protect the city from floods. Unfortunately the tunnel system didn’t work so floods have left high-water marks on numerous of its really old buildings. But it was the best Guanajuato could do (and had to since the surrounding mountains contained gold and silver that were being mined to empty by the Spaniards) so tunnels were rebuilt over the existing ones. Eventually modern technology allowed flood waters to run under the tunnels which are now used for roadways.Tunnels Since they kept building on top of ruined, flooded buildings as well, driving underground often gave us an opportunity to see foundations and cellars that are hundreds of years old. For the historians among us, the first War of Independence began in the state of Guanajuato.

I’m writing about Mexico because, first, it’s a country I love, but also because I think we, as Americans, have a terribly inaccurate understanding of its greatness. We’ve bought into stereotypes that have little or no basis in reality. Our national refrain about Mexico is “don’t drink the water.”

And while that’s true, it misses the beauty, history, and different ways of life. How about buying bottled water and drink the beauty of Mexico’s diverse culture and countryside instead?

My next post will talk about Mexico City and Oaxaca.

The future has an ancient heart ~ Carlo Levi

IT MIGHT BE THE BEST OF TIMES OR DAMN NEAR THE WORST

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Before I explain fracturing one of the great literary openings, I want to apologize for the extended period I’ve taken off from writing Monday posts. We’re way past my planned reappearance in January when I said I’d re-open. There have been deaths, potential lives (I’m going to be a grandfather to twin girls), a son moving out of the house, a rescheduled release date of my first three Matt Jacob novels by Polis Books, a decision to issue the fourth (TIES THAT BLIND) in fall of 2015 as both a print and e-book, and a great vacation in Mexico. From here on in I intend to post every other Monday and occasionally have different interesting and talented writers filling in on the off week.

As for the post’s title, it popped while watching an episode of Cosmos. I don’t have many regrets about my lack of formal education and perhaps that lack has added to my incredible delight and amazement as I begin to discern the scope of information and understanding we, as humans, have at our fingertips. In fact, it will take decades to decipher the raw data we receive every day from the rovers and probes that have been sent to space. It makes me tingle the same as listening to Rubinstein playing Chopin’s Nocturnes, Miles, reading Raymond Chandler, or seeing a Eugene O’Neill play.

It’s not just astronomers who might be living in the best of times. We’ve been discovering new species that survive at the ocean’s depths via modern submersible technology. And what of neurologists and neuropsychologists mapping the electrical pathways of the brain and the implications for treating diseases like Parkinson’s, for example. Hell, it’s only been about a decade since the completion of the Human Genome Project and we’re already reaping its benefits, and not just in medicine. Frankly, the discoveries that have occurred during my lifetime have dropped my jaw.

And let’s not ignore technology and the Internet, which has changed the way people interact, the ‘size’ of our world, politics all over the planet, and offers the opportunity to disseminate information faster than our wildest dreams.

Yeah, I know. A lot of people won’t like the paragraph above. I often hear complaints about the loss of the “real” world to the “virtual.” The massive erosion of privacy. Have listened as people derided the “Arab Spring” since the results have been considerably less than desired. I understand the issues, see the complications, appreciate the downsides, but continue to say bring it on.

From where I sit, the potential far outweighs the negative. Furthermore, whenever societies go through seismic change, many people decry the loss of the past. I’m just not one of them. Does anyone really believe the world would have known about the kidnapping of 250 Nigerian girls without the Internet?

That last fact brings me to the second half of the title. With all this great knowledge tumbling into our lives, we still live in a world better known for atrocities than humanity. That, to me, is a sick mind fuck.

People are going to tell me “twas ever thus” and they may be accurate. But until my dying day I’m never going to believe it has to stay this way, that we’re not better than this. That the gentle acts of kindness, compassion, and generosity we see between individuals every day can’t be translated into the greater society everywhere.

Why? It’s isn’t because of anything rose colored. I’ve been lucky to have seen some serious change for the better over the course of my life. From changing attitudes toward Trans*, LGBs, and women to issues that include income inequality–(1% versus 90)–and, to a much lesser degree, institutional racism.

Then add to that the commitment and work being done by those coming after my generation. Despite the economic hardships that younger people now face, they are still growing Teach For America. Still finding ways, inside and outside the system, to work for social change. Again, not just in the U.S., but places where it’s even more difficult and the risks much, much greater.

But yeah, you gotta be blind not to see that way, way too much totally sucks—and it behooves us to never forget. But however ugly it is and/or becomes, there’s really is an awful lot of wonder, awe, art, music, science, and good, good people to love and respect.

(Please remind me of this column when I get into one of my negative rants. Thanks.)

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.
Langston Hughes

TRANSGENDER VIOLENCE TRACKING PROJECT (PT.1)

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During the past week I noticed that a Facebook friend, Allison Woolbert, posted a link to a Kickstarter project called Transgender Violence Tracking Project (TVTP) that she had initiated. After reading the description of its goals, I realized I knew little to nothing about the transgender community and its struggles. So I messaged Allison to see if we could talk on the phone about the project and the issues facing transgender people in general. The other day we spent a couple of hours talking about her, her work, and the extraordinary problems transgender people face on a daily basis.

Before I dig too deeply into our conversation, I want to say a few words about Kickstarter and the TVTP. Kickstarter is a platform and a resource; they are not involved in the development of the projects themselves. Anyone can launch a project on Kickstarter as long as it meets their guidelines. Projects are allowed to run for a set amount of time and pledges are collected only if a project meets its stated monetary goal.

The Transgender Violence Tracking Project will only be up and running until 9:07 PM November 21st and has so far collected $1,221.00 of the $3,500 goal.

So what is the TVTP? Well, it turns out that very little specific information is collected or known about the violence that is clearly directed toward the transgender community. Although there is an annual Transgender Day of Remembrance to memorialize those who have been killed by acts of violence directed toward the community, (all those that even knew this occurred please raise your hand) the specifics of those deaths remain unknown. TVTP will not only keep track of those who have been killed, but “will be a portal where the transgender community and their allies will be able to track other acts of violence, and get a full record of those murdered, how they were murdered, arrests (if there are any), trial outcomes (if there are any trials) as well as those who die by their own hands because of the intolerable pressure our society inflicts upon transgender people.” (Allison Woolbert)

As those of you who visit the Kickstarter site can see, the data collection and its organization seems incredibly daunting, so one of my first questions was how a project of this breadth could be accomplished for $3,500. Allison explained that the project will be run gratis by her and volunteers, with the pledged money used to create the software and train those volunteers. One look at her full resume leaves no doubt that the project will achieve its goals.

As those of you who regularly read Just sayin’ know, the only things I promote are my books, my email list, and my Facebook Author’s Page. Not today. Today I’m urging each of you to visit the TVTP Kickstarter site, tell your friends, and donate as much as possible.

To put the violence directed toward this community in perspective, transgender people are about 1 to 1.5% of the world’s population but about 400 times more likely to be assaulted or murdered than the rest of the population. Add that to the US reality that people of color are 10 times more likely to be assaulted and murdered than anyone else, you can only imagine the odds of violence for a transgender person of color. TVTP will include a breakout of racial statistics.

It gets even worse. Transgender individuals aren’t “just” murdered. The nature of the killings are the most violent, horrific acts imaginable. Dismemberments, vicious multiple stabbings (15 times or more), immolation, are routine examples of the violence perpetrated on those who are transgender people. The tragedy is that these types of violence are not the exception but the rule when it comes to transgender murder. TVTP will work toward publicizing that which occurs in the community.

Let’s take a step back. Gender Dysphoria is a medical condition, not a sexual orientation. Although the general public often confuse cross-dressing with transexualism, (I intended to use transgender and transsexual interchangeably), they are very different. Cross-dressers might have different sexual orientations, but they do not experience living in the wrong body. From an early age on, transsexuals do—at the core of their very being. Cross-dressers (unless the cross-dressing is an attempt to reduce the internal pressure between the transgender’s mind/body dichotomy or the “transition” from one body to another) are not people who are at odds with their body. Transexual people are. As Allison said, “I looked in the mirror and didn’t understand what I saw. My skin was thick and didn’t seem like mine. The core of my mind simply couldn’t understand what I was seeing. It wasn’t me.”

So what do we have here? Certainly the general public understands chemo baldness. It’s a result of a medical condition. The general public understands people in wheelchairs. It too is a result of a medical condition. But to this day people continue to reject transsexual people before and after surgery. It’s just too damn threatening, though you’d think that cancer might be more so since it could actually happen to them. Yet transsexual individuals not only trigger fear, they trigger hatred. And, as a result, people who are transexual not only have to deal with the war within themselves, but the outside world’s hatred and violence.

Which is why this column has first focused on the Transgender Violence Tracking Project.  The project a step in identifying, quantifying, publicizing, and hopefully changing a societal sickness that encourages hatred and dehumanization of people who are simply carrying the weight of a medical condition. The project will track all those who fall under the transgender umbrella: drag queens, butch women, effeminate men, and cross-dressers. This is an attempt to significantly reduce a horrible, ongoing oppression.

But the reality of transexualism is even harsher than what I’ve already touched upon. Today I focused on the TVTP.  In the next post or two I’ll move on to my interview with Allison to put a human face on the community—from the hoops transexuals have to jump through to be accepted for surgery, how the LGB community deals with their T, to my friend Allison’s personal journey. But if anything I’ve written here strikes a chord, please pledge what you can and please talk to your friends about pledging as well. These are our brothers and sisters.

Sexual orientation is who you are attracted to and who you want to love. Gender identity is who you really are.”  Allison Woolbert

A VIEW OF THE BRIDGE

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I was intrigued when I first read about The Bridge, adapted from a 2011 Scandinavian series of the same name. Although the drama would have been a very different one if located on the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, (which was first suggested) I was pleased it was half in El Paso, Texas, and then on the other side of the bridge and border Juárez, Mexico.

The show follows two detectives—Sonya Cross (Diane Kruger) of the El Paso Police Department and Marco Ruiz (Demián Bichir), a Mexican homicide detective from Juárez—as they search for the killer of a body spanning both sides the border on the bridge.

I was especially pleased to see that when events took place in Mexico, Spanish would be used with English subtitles—something the movie Traffic pulled off with great success. Something that implies everything isn’t all white USA, all the time.

The other detail that caught my attention, though never explicitly stated, was the knowledge that critics had almost universally accepted that the U.S. detective, Sonia Cross, has Asperger’s Disorder, a condition that interferes with social interaction and non-verbal communication.

In Law & Order: Criminal Intent actor Vincent D’Onofrio played a detective that many people believed had Asperger’s, though the show or major television critics never mentioned it. So the notion that The Bridge would deal with this a bit more directly piqued my interest.

Thanks to cable’s “On Demand,” I’ve been able to binge on the first season for the past two weeks and, at first, was pretty disappointed. The plot seemed clichéd, albeit with occasionally a bit more subtlety. We discover, for example, that Marco Ruiz, the Mexican detective, slept with one of the other major characters because she returns his forgotten wallet to Sonia instead of watching them writhe around in a bed. But high ranking Mexican police officials are portrayed as completely indifferent to the multitude of missing woman in Juárez, only interested in closing the book and getting rid of the U.S. detective.

How many television shows have that one good detective up against an uncaring bureaucracy? Women as bloody victims are, in and of itself, a major cliché.  Even the oddly complicated shotgun partnership between Sonia and Marco learning to work together is something we’ve seen before. Many times.

Furthermore, at first, Sonia’s “Asperger” character was so over the top it defied belief—not that someone on the spectrum would behave as she did, but that she could have managed to become a detective. As a mitigating factor, the police chief was also her rabbi, so to speak. As time goes on, we realize that the gentle coaching he gives as supervisor and mentor is the result of some mutual history.

Perhaps, though, my biggest annoyance was what I was initially most interested in: the use of the Tex/Mex border town as the locale. Rather than allowing viewers the opportunity to actually experience and realize the changing demographics of our country, I wondered if the show permitted people to write off the socio-economics and changing demographics as limited to only where the rubber meets the road. That is, just the towns directly on each side of the line.

But I was caught up in my binge so I kept watching. And ended up very, very pleased that I did.

The second half of the season turned The Bridge around. The writers softened Sonia’s symptoms to a place where it was actually possible to imagine her as working her way up the ranks while still struggling to solve both the mystery at hand along with the mystery of human interactions. At the same time, Marco’s easygoing, but virtuous cop became more complex in the face of his imploding marriage and family. Despite a few missteps, Demián Bichir’s acting and compelling face has jumped from the screen and has been superb.

Even more importantly, for me anyway, I’ve come to see the real value in using the Tex/Mex border towns. Imagine if you will two giant funnels, each located in one country and tubed together with the other. Mexico’s funnel gives the viewer a realistic look at those who have gone through the torturous travel of crawling toward its skinny pipeline—defying dessert heat and unscrupulous bribed “transporters,” only to arrive in a town that cares nothing for their well-being. We all know the sentiments and attitudes that waft through our funnel, even though we try to block it as best we can. And woe to those who manage to squeeze through the tube. I find it passing strange that we diligently work to jail or deport people who risk everything imaginable and survive hell to simply better their lives and those of their children while, at the same time, we barely slap the wrists of those who have actually crippled our economy and the day-to-day lives of millions of our fellow citizens. Really, who are the “illegals” living here?

Bottom line: I’ve re-learned a lesson that I should have remembered. Sometimes it takes more than a show or two, or even a season or two, for an ambitious attempt at a series to find its legs. Art ain’t art with one stroke of a brush. (Unless you’re already really, really famous.)

I recently read that FX (the show’s network) has signed up for a second season of 13 episodes. If The Bridge continues its creative development and doesn’t regress into stereotypes or overly traditional plot lines, the view has the potential to be really special.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview – nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty. Stephen Jay Gould