Tag Archives: Opinion

Don’t Like Me on Face Book; Don’t Follow Me on Twitter

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By

Susan Kelly

Susan Kelly       …And, for Gawd’s sake, don’t expect me to post any photos on Instagram.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I should get with the zeitgeist. But for whatever reason, I just can’t. At least in terms of social media.

It’s not that I’m a Luddite. I love technology. I love the Internet. I love being able to take my cup of morning coffee to the computer, sit down, and read any newspaper in the world that has a website. (I lived in Scotland for four years while in graduate school, so anything going on in the U.K. is interesting to me personally beyond the regular attention I pay to world affairs.) I love being able to go to the Mayo Clinic or Massachusetts General Hospital online for medical advice. I love IMDB for movie reviews, goofy as some of them are. I love the website that told me that one of my ancestors, whose name I never knew before the site posted it, was injured at the Battle of Gettysburg, mustered out the following September, and then re-enlisted in the Union Army the following December, presumably having recovered from his wounds. (Either he was a true Union man, or he thought being shot at by the boys in gray was better than facing another Vermont winter. But no matter.) I love email. I’ve participated in some lively political, literary, and cultural online forums. There are many more things I love about the process of instant worldwide communications. It’s made my life so much richer.

But I just can’t get into social media. All writers are supposed to have Facebook pages, or sites, or whatever you call them. Publishers insist on it. In fact, I have one. It’s there for the sole purpose of advertising my books. I don’t think it sells many books. When I glance at it, which may be once every six months, if Facebook is lucky, the “news feed”—whatever the hell that is—is filled with messages from total strangers posting photos of baby animals, places they’ve been to, birthday parties they threw for their two-year-old kids, some fabulous bargain they got at T.J. Maxx, a review of some restaurant I’ll never go to because the cuisine sounds appalling, and painfully (as opposed to painstakingly) detailed instructions on how they trained their kitty-cats to use the litterbox. I don’t know these people. They don’t know me, but they insist on sharing the intimate details of their lives with me. I live in dread that the next time—maybe sometime in 2018—that I check my FB page, I’ll be treated to a graphic description of someone’s menopause, supplemented with captioned photos of clots. Or a home video of a prostatectomy.

I have been assured that there is a way to control who sees your Facebook page, and who posts there, and who doesn’t. But the point is, as an author with a product to sell, I’m supposed to keep the page open to all comers. Perhaps there’s a way to limit the comers to people who want to talk about books. But if there is, at this stage in my life, I’m too bored and busy to find out what it is.

I have a Twitter account. I have posted exactly one message on it, which instructs people to visit my website (www.susankellywriter.com). As far as I know, I have no followers. I also have a LinkedIn account. When I started it, I got bombarded immediately by people advertising their self-published self-help books. There would be—and I am not kidding—at least 40 messages apiece from the same three or four people, none of whom, of course, were known to me. The same message. Over and over and over again. I resented the fact that they were using my account to advertise their products. That put me off looking at my LinkedIn account for at least a year or two.

As with Facebook, there’s probably a way to control LinkedIn and Twitter. But again, as with Facebook, I’m too bored by the whole prospect to do whatever work is involved to find it. And, mind you, this is coming from someone who has been asked by others to fix their computers when there was some sort of glitch, who’s test-driven academic software, and who has the kind of psychotic patience required to read through an 800-page trial transcript and take notes on it.

I used to blog on my website. But I got bored with that, too, because it seemed as if I was talking to myself, although I knew I wasn’t. And I am still very happy to respond to any questions or comments people post there. I ignore, of course, obvious raving lunatics; those who promise to tell me who the real Boston Strangler was if I meet them in a dark alley at midnight; and any person who asks me for a date that involves the deployment of squirt-can whipped cream and chainsaws.

Here’s the final irony about my Facebook site: People I actually know, personally, who’ve looked for it say they can’t find it.

So if you want to read me, follow me, like me–I’m here at Zach’s website, which seems to me more like a small magazine for a select readership, one to which I’m pleased to contribute.

And remember: No canned whipped cream, no chainsaws.

“SOMETHING’S HAPPENING HERE…”

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By

Zachary Klein

zachI’ve read a ton of articles about how my hippie-dippy brothers and sisters from the 60s and 70s accomplished “nothing” during our period as activists. How my generation set the stage for right of center (being polite here) administrations and repressive laws. How my generation failed to block Reagan’s revolution. How my generation ultimately opted into the capitalistic status quo—worried only about upward mobility and shekels. These analyses must be true; I’ve seen them on CNN. Problem is, these analyses are bullshit.

Not gonna put lipstick on a pig. We didn’t stop Nixon from gutting Great Society programs. Certainly didn’t stop Reagan from funneling great amounts of wealth from the middle/working/poor classes to the rich and powerful under the guise of “trickle down” economics. Weren’t able to push Clinton toward progressive policies, or stop the upward flow of money under Democratic governance. Couldn’t even slow the egregious wars that occurred after the seventies. Nonetheless, it’s still bullshit…

Because our legacy continues to march on. Women’s equality, LGBT rights recognition, and yes, the anti-war movement. Does anyone actually believe that 30+ percent of the population would have initially objected to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had we not fought against the war in Vietnam? Truth is, the 60s and 70s continued to lay the foundation for today’s real political struggles (and no, I don’t mean the presidential race). Our work and commitment, like all foundations, often goes unnoticed, overshadowed by our “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” reputation.

While my intention is not to pat my generation’s back, I also want to point out that a large number of our children have followed in our footsteps. Not necessarily taking to the streets, but you can find them working in social service agencies or inner city schools, or as medical family practitioners (among others) and exposing the underbelly of intolerance and injustice in books, music, journalism, and art.

And not just our children. Folks fighting today are connected to those who came before. As were we. Each generation does not re-invent the wheel when it comes to the struggle for peoples’ dignity and rights. Or against oppression, wars, and dehumanization.

In truth, people who are currently striving for what we, of the 60s and 70s, believe to be right and true, have built upon our work and burrowed into the heart of our country’s societal madness.

Two issues immediately jump to mind—not including climate change, which our Republican presidential candidates refuse to acknowledge.

#BlackLivesMatter is not simply a response to current conditions, but the next step in a long bloody road that stretches from our birth as a nation to Roberts v. City of Boston (1848), to reconstruction, to the founding of the NAACP, to Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Black Panthers to today. But until recently, the keyword was racism and racism just doesn’t do justice to the brutal, scarring oppression that African-Americans have faced throughout their entire US history. (For an up close and personal, please read Between The World and Me, an extraordinary depiction of present day African-American life by Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

White supremacy, the belief that White people are superior to those of all other races, especially the Black race, and should therefore dominate society, dates back to the 1500s. And yet the United States has made it our own. White supremacy is imbued in our culture, is our culture, and exists inside each and every one of us so called White people.

During my lifetime I’ve seen an expansion of civil rights, an amelioration of discrimination, but until now I hadn’t experienced White people slowly inching toward acknowledgement of White supremacy and how it has affected and contemporaneously affects the lives (and deaths) of people of color–especially African-Americans. I’m beginning to see that today. With shame, it took a drumbeat of police shootings and mass incarcerations to finally slam that reality onto the table. If nothing else, this, in and of itself, is damning evidence of our willful blindness.

Although the Occupy movement is no longer in the streets, its fading light continues to shine on the current, horrific reality beneath the rather bland words of income inequality. Again, if not a direct descendent, a descendent nonetheless of movements whose candles often flicker but will not be extinguished. When a society passes the Robber Baron redline something has to give and it CAN’T be 90% of our country. We now live in a society that rewards a company’s stockholders rather than its workers who are paid so little they often need to supplement their income with food stamps. Please.

We can only hope they have gone too far, or we can be effective enough, to believe in a sleeping giant. If only 60 percent of that 90% actually suffer day-to-day from this “income disparity” (a disproportionate number of sufferers being African-American), that giant has the potential to be awakened by this or the next generation who pick up Occupy’s torch, who itself picked it up from…

And if awakened (admittedly a big ‘if’), woe to those few who have stolen and hoarded our nation’s wealth.

No, it’s not the sixties anymore and it sure ain’t Kansas. I’m no Pollyanna or soothsayer but what I see around me, what I experience coming from this generation, gives me hope. The issues mentioned (and there are many more) represent a frontal assault on the engine that drives this country. And that engine will not go quietly into the night. But “a journey of a thousand mile march begins with a single step,” and we took that step a long time ago.

It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept. ~ Bill Watterson

BRAINDROPS

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are falling from my head…

By

Zachary Klein

zachWe’re approaching summer’s dog days and I’m feeling pretty mellow, so deciding what to write this week has been difficult. It’s always easier for me if I have a mad on and Germany’s attitude toward Greece jumps to mind. Or how ‘bout them sorry Sox? But mellow is rare, so I might as well see where it takes me.

We recently had a great time at Fenway Park. It was a beautiful night and, as I looked around the field, I realized how impressive a renovation had been done by Janet Marie Smith, the architect of Baltimore’s Camden Yards. Despite adding a significant number of seats and signage to the oldest field in baseball (1912), Ms. Smith somehow made the relic a much more welcoming place while keeping its traditional feel and atmosphere. (Not the ticket prices, though, which are the highest on average in Major League Baseball.) It was a fun night even with the Sox loss–to be expected this season.

And speaking of renovations, despite my writing partner, Susan’s send up of HOUSE HUNTERS in last week’s column, Sue (my wife) and I are gearing up for our own major league kitchen rebuild, replete with wall removals, open floor plan (NOT!), and granite vomitori—whoa—make that countertops. Reconstruction begins sometime in August and I’m fervently hoping that it takes a little less time and is much more successful than our Country’s. Not gonna bet on it though.

Ahh, betting. The Casino War still rages on in Boston. Although voted FOR by almost 60% and supported by rejecting another referendum which tried to overturn the first, a number of politicians are still trying judicial end runs–Including our mayor.

I understand the issues people have with gambling and have some mixed feelings myself. But voters, tired of seeing millions and millions of dollars flow to Connecticut’s casinos, spoke loudly and clearly TWICE. My biggest regret is that Boston won’t allow a den of inequity on one of the harbor islands. And not because The Donald is a bidding developer because he isn’t.catTrumpNo surprise, really. The “Athens of the East” clings to its puritanical ancestry despite our current liberal reputation. Clings to many anomalies. Just ask anyone of Color or eyeball the vast sea of White faces while catching a game at Fenway.

Not sure why, but somehow all that White makes me think of Greece. (I tried not to. Really.) Excuse me, but what two-faced crazy is running around in Germany’s head?

“London School of Economics and Political Science Professor of Economic History Albrecht Ritschl conducted research into how Germany was able to pay off its debts after the two World Wars. In particular, his re-interpretation of the scale of financial payments to, and debt forgiveness for Germany after World War II shed new light on the approach that modern-day Germany should take towards debt-ridden countries such as Greece. Ritschl looked in detail at the financial assistance that was paid to Germany after the war under the Marshall Plan, in which the US gave $17 billion – around $160 billion in today’s values – in economic support to help rebuild European economies. He showed that while the transfers were tiny, the cancellation of debts was worth as much as four times the country’s entire economic output in 1950 and laid the foundation for Germany’s fast post-war recovery.”

It seems pretty obvious the terms of Greece’s “bailout” will crush the poor and working people of that country—but fuck ‘em. Let’s make sure the greed-heads get the interest owed. Every goddam Euro.

And now you got me started. What’s with the response to the Iranian deal? This is a no-brainer but once again the human no-brainers are running their mouths. If Reagan’s administration had pulled this off, all the pols would be kissing his ass. Hell, Nixon cut a deal with China when Mao was still alive! Since it’s Obama’s administration though, both Democrats and Republicans are talking stupid. Batshit racists, whether they know it or not.

Sorry about that. I said no rants….

especially since this has been a fine week. Belated birthday dinner with a good friend, a rooftop dinner with other good friends, and a visit to the Boston’s Greenway’s amazing new installation by Janet Echelman, an aerial shape and color shifting translucent public art sculpture.Aerial

Janet-Echelman-Netting-sculpture

 

 

 

 

tumblr_nopdc9G41s1s5qhggo8_500(For more information about Ms. Echelman’s wonderful piece, including a time-lapse video of the installation check out http://www.echelman.com/project/boston-greenway/. You won’t be sorry.)

Thank you Big Dig for stitching my city back together and creating space near the ocean for beauty.

It never ceases to amaze me how little public art is offered in our cities compared to say, Mexico or France. But hey, that’s a topic for another week.

Told you I was feeling mellow.

 

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. ~ John Milton

A FATHER’S DAY LAMENT

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By

Zachary Klein

zachYesterday was Father’s Day and I enjoyed talking to my kids and getting their good wishes. But somewhere along the way I realized that I’m lucky. Jake and Matt are adults and able to understand the racism that exists in our country. I don’t need to sit them down and try to explain the underlying causes that produce nine slain Blacks at their own church. And my grandchildren are too young to understand much of anything since they’re 7½ months old, so Matt and Alyssa won’t be doing any explaining for a while.

But what about the parents who must try to make some sense out of this one and the other countless tragedies that routinely occur to Black people every day of the week in this country?

Me, I go crazy trying to think of solutions to this curse. It’s impossible to outlaw hate so the haters keep hating and passing it down to their offspring. So I desperately imagine redesigning our states in ways that allow people who believe in integration to actually live in integrated communities. Where parents send their kids to schools that look like that old Coke commercial. Where the police don’t predictably shoot teenagers because of color.

A dream and not even a satisfactory one. This idea also creates states where people could simply live with their own kind. Would we call ourselves the United Reservations of America?

So let’s pretend that the vast majority of our population really wants an end to racism and everything it represents. What’s to do?

I suppose we can just limp along from one murder to another and accept that nothing of import will change. But I’m not built that way. I can’t sit idly by and watch the disintegration of my society without at least considering some alternatives to the status quo.

I’d start by demanding that all presidential hopefuls begin talking about the 46.5 million people who live in poverty with almost half of them children. Worse, 20.4 million people, were living in deep poverty which means they were living 50% below the poverty line that our government has established. Compared to non-Hispanic Whites, Hispanics are more than twice as likely to live in deep poverty, and Blacks are almost three times more likely to live in deep poverty.

Now take a look at more numbers for minorities: Among racial and ethnic groups, Blacks had the highest poverty rate at 27.4 percent, followed by Hispanics at 26.6 percent and Whites at 9.9 percent. (These numbers come from the 2013 census and I don’t believe it’s gotten any better.)

It’s damn hard to enjoy Father’s Day when so many kids (and their parents), are suffering in a land of plenty.

And even many of our best hopes aren’t talking the talk. I know Bernie Sanders, and a couple of other candidates have spoken some about this issue, but almost always under the rubric of the middle class. Always the middle class and “working people.” Of course we should redistribute wealth to help solidify both those groups, but I want to hear politicians speak about poverty. To take the issue head on and tell us their plans to eradicate it. As some before me, (Martin Luther King to name one) I too believe that it’s impossible to untangle poverty from racism—though there are more facets to racism than just hunger and hopelessness.

White America has always found a way to oppress then blame our victims. And within our boundaries victims are almost always minorities. We’ve done it historically, socially, and culturally so hard and for so long throughout our country’s entire history that it’s become a disease. I’m not talking about an emotional or cultural disease, but one that’s invaded the very being of White people.

This isn’t a metaphor but something I believe to be literally true. Epigenetics, (the study of the process by which genetic information is translated into the substance and behavior of an organism: specifically, the study of the way in which the expression of heritable traits is modified by environmental influences or other mechanisms without a change to the DNA sequence), probably explains an important underlying cause of our racism. In other words, who we are is a combination of our genes and the way the environment affects the expression of those genes. We are racially sick.

We are racist because we have swallowed our own myths about Black people so thoroughly they’ve become part of who we are—right down next to to our genes. We are racially sick.

I’m aware this also works the other way around: minorities have become infused with how their environment impacts them. But frankly, racism is a White peoples’ disease and, if we really want to get rid of our malady, our focus has to be on ourselves and all the institutions we as Whites have created. Until and unless we eradicate poverty and root out our own disease and the unhealthy racist institutions we have created—oppression and violence and blame the victim—will never end.

Difficult for a father to explain to his kids on Father’s Day. That all us White folks have an illness called racism, virtually all our institutions reflect this illness, and since I brought you into this world, you kids have it too. And it’s probably gonna take the rest of your lives, and beyond, to cure it if we, as a people, even bother to try.

And try we must because if we don’t confront our sickness we will forever be locked in a society that will continue to breed separate and unequal. Now that’s a tough tale to tell on Father’s Day.

ANOTHER TAKE ON CRIME WRITING

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zach

By Zachary Klein

I’m an outspoken pacifist. I cover my eyes while watching most violence I see on television or in the movies. And I continue to believe in humanity, despite the gruesome reality that surrounds us.

I also earn my living writing about murder, betrayal, greed, and as much of the dark underside in our society as I can possibly perceive and understand.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Nothing. Writing is an art and I believe that every type of art gives all of us the space to experience the truly ugly strands of human nature without having to act them out. I’ll go even farther. It doesn’t have to be art. I believe the same about pornography, politically incorrect movies, and any “make believes.” I feel exactly the same about video games—though I haven’t played one since Tetris.

I know the argument that viewing/reading violence, sex, and the politically incorrect, actually encourages people to act out their inner uglies. I just don’t believe it. Worse, arguments like those have tightened control on what we can see, listen to, write and produce. We’ve lost a serious amount of creative space, not added. In fact, I think that throughout history, restriction and censorship has done more damage than what it tries to condemn.

A few nights ago Sue and I were flipping through mainstream channels, spotted the film Airplane, and stopped to watch—though we’d seen it a boatload of times. The movie had been released in 1980 and, at the same moment, we turned to each other and agreed that it would be impossible to make that movie now. “Have you ever seen a grown man naked?” pilot Peter Graves asks a little boy. (Not allowed to crack wise about pederasty these days.) A stewardess blows a rubber doll. (Where besides a fetish flick can you watch that?) An airport manager sniffs glue. And much, much more that defies our current cultural zeitgeist. Nothing in the movie was sacred. Oh, Airplane was rated PG.

The politically incorrect parts were making fun of and lambasting racism, sexism, drug use etc, rather than promoting it. Know what? Our kids did not grow up traumatized from sexual innuendo. (Who do you know that became a racist after watching Blazing Saddles?) No matter how you slice it, there’s a loss here.

I’ll grant my belief that every type “make believe” as a space to allow the worst of ourselves to be harmlessly encountered is difficult to conceive. Especially since we live in a world with an amazing amount of violence and perversity that has always, and continues, to exist. It’s tough to see how crime writing has reduced crime when crime is rampant. That writing about murder has reduced killing. But I believe it’s tough to see because the gift of imaginary freedom has always been buried under reality. And reality isn’t particularly pretty.

We’ve been socialized to think entertainment is simply that. For fun. That art is something to read, watch, and sometimes feel. And it’s that socialization which has reduced the power of “make believe” and I believe added to real life’s crushing brutality.

So before we can get an honest answer to my proposition, we actually need to eradicate the social/political/poverty and race issues that cause the actual violence in which we live. Only please don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Even if we were magically able to staunch the blood flow, there will always be an underside in everyone and that’s not going anywhere. Except into imagination which I as a reader and writer hold most dear. For the “make believe” we read in crime fiction or see in violent movies or hear in some dark music is a space that allows us to visit, explore, and treat the worst parts of ourselves—harmlessly, and then come back to our normal lives and sit down at the dinner table.

I’m not saying I write detective fiction simply for the good of humanity. In past columns I’ve mentioned the wonderful similarities I see (and sometimes get to enjoy) between playing jazz and writing detective fiction. (To be honest, probably more traditional jazz than total free-form.) The excitement of taking a paradigm and pushing at its boundaries. The novelist’s pleasure of bringing their audience into unknown places and unexpectedly intense situations.

But more than the personal enjoyment, I believe that, without proof, our work as crime writers contribute to the hope of a better, less violent, more tolerant world. And whether or not we collectively, cognitively, acknowledge it, all the multiple forms I mentioned above give promise to that hope.

We need imaginary violence. We need a place for kinkiness, we need a space in which we can safely (for ourselves and others) try out anything we want to be—without actually being it and without fear of reprisal.

We need more Breaking Bads, Sopranos, Deadwoods, Big Sleeps, Red Harvests, and especially more movies like Airplane.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus ~ Mark Twain