pre November 2018
muse-letter \’myüz-‘le-tər noun
1: a personal message, inspired by a muse of one's own creation, addressed to a person or organization, in the course of which, the sender becomes absorbed in thought; especially turning something over in the mind meditatively and often inconclusively.
2: a letter from a poet, or one who envisions oneself as such, in which he or she “muses” on that which is perceived to be news, or newsworthy, usually in some ironic or absurd way.
Featuring...
The Pandemic Tipping Point or… When It First Sank In
March 11th last month marked the "official" one year anniversary of the start of the pandemic, as so designated by WHO. (Don’t ask who’s WHO?). In actuality, the first U.S. COVID-19 death occurred in early February of 2020. And who knew at that point the scope of what was yet to come. Not even WHO.
To acknowledge the occasion, as you knew they would, The New York Times devoted an entire Sunday section to it—"The Week Our Reality Broke." Or, as I would frame it in less dramatic terms: when did we realize that things were about to drastically change? When was the moment when you said, “Hey, this is real?” And how did you react?
No doubt there are still several naysayers naysaying that, “It’s not real, so it didn’t faze me at all.” And… “I wouldn’t put on a mask, even at gunpoint, and yada yada yada.” But no mas on no masks, please. That horse has long since left the stable, whereupon it was beaten to death. And the beating, as yet, has not subsided. So for the benefit of those individuals, I’ll rephrase it. When did you first notice others being such fool-hardy alarmists regarding this “flu”? The intention here is not one of debate. But curiosity about "tipping points."
"The Tipping Point" was the title of a bestselling book over 20 years ago (if you can believe that), by Malcolm Gladwell. He defined it as "the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” He continued, using as an example what turned out to be prescient: "When ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do.”
The Times offered a random account of first-person virus tipping points. Here's a few that jumped out at me.
“When I went home that night on Feb.26, my husband and I laid out our commitment of ‘lasts.’ We planned my last bus commute, our last in studio yoga class, our last trip to the movies and my last dinner out with my girlfriends for the first week of March.”
“March 10 was the last day I was able to touch my mother. For seven years, it was my daily practice to go to her nursing home and eat supper with her…”
“My birthday is on March 11…I sent a defiant message to my guests that the party was still on. The next day I sent another message that the party was cancelled.”
“I went to the grocery store on March 13 to pick up a few items …many shelves were empty. The checkout lines wrapped around the store…”
“I was attending a large birthday dinner party…March 14….My surgeon son texted me, ‘Leave now! Stay home.’”
And you?
For me (I thought you'd never ask), it started with an inkling on March 8th, in a church. Which inspired a poem I wrote and posted here last April. This stanza suggests that something has changed.
But there will be no pressing of the flesh
on this Sunday morning
in the greetings and offerings of
“Peace be with you.”
Nor hands to be later enjoined while singing
full-throated
The Lord’s Prayer.
And it concludes...
Now we put our faith
in that of antibacterial hand wipes,
as the hands of God,
even under this very roof
are not enough to cleanse us and send us
back out into the world unafraid.
From a church pew to a bar stool one week later. March 16th at 8pm.
New York Governor Cuomo decreed that on that date and time, all bars and restaurants will be closed. (Until?) At that point, 4,500 people in the U.S. had tested positive for COVID-19 and only 88 had died. (A number that would shoot up to 3,400 only two weeks later). Given these modest tallies within a populace of 330 million, I had little concern that any of this could affect me personally. Though I wondered why Cuomo didn't just announce that these establishment closings would begin on that morning, rather than kicking in at 8pm that evening. And on a Monday of all days.
Given such a drastic measure, it had a war time feel to it. And looking it up, I found out that indeed, there were some rather stringent regulations put in place during WWII. As might have been expected. Actually going far beyond expectations.
“Among the restrictions were prohibitions on travel more than five miles from home; curfews from 8:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.; confiscation of shortwave radios, firearms, cameras, flashlights, and other "signaling devices"; and evacuation from coastal towns.”
Quote of the Month
Beware of Taking Sides in March
I. Cancel Culture or Carbine Culture?
Remember way back in the days of trying to have legitimate discussions about questionable descriptions and illustrations of minorities in some of Dr. Seuss’s books? Like about a month ago? The plaintive wails of “cancel culture”?
Everything now, is "cancel culture," "cancel culture," "cancel culture." A proclamation exclaimed across a broad spectrum of ideology. From Conservative to Liberal, Cruz to Cuomo, and all in between. As if that were the overriding threat to a sane society. As if a greater threat, than say, going to a grocery store where you might get gunned down in Fresh Produce. As if storming the capital, and the possibility of further insurrections, were no longer of any concern. That's all sooo January.
Shortly after the Seuss controversy had simmered a bit, in the course of one week, two horrendous murder sprees resulted in 8 people dead in Atlanta, 10 in Colorado (including a police officer). Our mass shootings don’t lack for geographical diversity.
Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit group that catalogs gun violence in the U.S, defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot or killed in a single incident not including the shooter. By this definition, 104 mass shootings have occurred in 29 states plus Washington, D.C., in 2021 up through March 23rd. More than 120 have been killed, 380 others injured.
But we’ve been down this road before, and nothing changes. In yet another variation on my go-to "equus idiom," it’s like shooting a dead horse with an AR-15. All 30 rounds. So I'll move on to Seuss.
But before I do,
from The Cat in the Hat
I’ve borrowed Things,
1 and 2.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, grandstanding against those he deems responsible for cancel culture (read Democrats), did a video of himself snarkily reading “Green Eggs and Ham.” I wish he would also read aloud, the names of those 122 people who have been killed in mass shootings so far this year.
Though no toady for Seuss, I am a fan of his. That might have been obvious to those who read the April MuseLetter of a year ago. As quarantining set in, the retitling of this classic might have been echoed here and there. But the “cover” design and “pages” within, were my own.
we were immortal at that age.
To be honest though, this sudden stoppage of restauranteering, had a certain melodrama about it. Not exactly the Kennedy assassination, but I expected at any moment, Walter Cronkite to break in with a News Bulletin, sending a shiver up the spine as such program interruptions did back in the day. At a time before a hyperventilating Wolf Blitzer might be declaring the opening of a pack of cigarettes as "Breaking News!"
Could this really be that serious? And so I decided to do what any man my age might do. Or maybe just this man? Which was to turn back the clock a good 40-50 years to bring back those days, if even for a night, of getting a rush from
or devil-may-care, especially in the face of something foreboding. And after all,
acting with a sense of joie de vivre
Here are some brief excerpts from a journal, recording this septuagenarian's brief strut on a stage of self-indulgence. Note the closing setback.
March 17, 2020
Tuesday 12:46 pm
Jo (my partner) and I went over to Jubilee (around the corner from our apartment) at 5:30 for one last hurrah.
And what a hurrah. One last martini, then we became friendly with 2 guys to our right, who… plied us all night with an expensive red wine. Out of nowhere, Joyce appeared. We hadn’t seen her in 4 years? And never expected to see her again.… .And though there is supposed to be a distance kept, she kissed me on the cheek. I think twice throughout her stay (before she would once again disappear into the night).
We left just after 8 in what had turned into a party. Was it irresponsible? I guess. What is happening is unprecedented. It's been compared to England during WWII. Where people were under siege, civilians in a war. This time the war is against a virus.
* * *
I cancelled the hotel reservation in Dubuque yesterday....No way am I going to Iowa for that Yankee game that no doubt will be postponed...I would think.
Back to the future: April 1, 2021. While the current tally stands at over 30 million COVID cases and over 550,000 deaths in the U.S., there has been some good news that indicates we were moving in the right direction. Death rates are finally declining, as vaccinations are rising. Daily doses recently climbed to an average of 2.7 million, and now about 16% of us have been fully vaccinated. But that is being offset by some bad news that recently came in (March 29th). As I conclude, 27 states have now had a spike in cases.
Biden’s hope, was that we would be openly celebrating the Fourth of July, and that at least one aspect of the “old normal” of unbridled hugging among family, friends and acquaintances would be back by that day. That could be problematic with this latest development, as many Governors have been anxious to "re-open" their states. COVID-19 is as formidable a foe as any we've encountered in any war. Save the "Civil" one. When we were the foe.
II. Dr. Seuss: a “Pair-of-Docs?”
At the outset, I’m reminded of what I’ll call the Carlin Koan. A koan being a paradox to be meditated upon, to force one into gaining sudden intuitive enlightenment. In this case…call it thinking outside the glass.
Metaphorically, was Seuss’s glass half full or half empty? Given his history I would say neither. He was a complex person, as most of us are. And sometimes, our glasses are twice as large as they need to be. (Ego?). A bit of a way to go to say that some things, and some situations, are neither a) nor b) but that the answer lies somewhere in c).
We don’t know with certainty what Seuss (née Theodor Seuss Geisel) would have felt about “cancel culture,” as that phrase really only came into the collective consciousness around 2017. He died 30 years ago. Interesting to note though, is that Seuss was responsive to criticism. As an example, he sanctioned changes in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, way back in the ‘70’s. And in so doing, is purported to have said, “It’s not how you start out but how you finish.”
He had come to realize that he did harbor some harsh racial feelings long before that. Many expressed, as a political cartoonist in the 1930’s and the World War II era. For example, he was a supporter of the mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans, and used offensive stereotypes to caricature the Japanese. Could this cartoon be any uglier?
However, he changed his views on this dramatically after the war. In 1954, he published Horton Hears a Who!, which was an allegory for America's postwar occupation of Japan, and he dedicated the book to "My Great Friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan.” Yet other prejudices might have remained, and found their way into his writings for children.
The Seuss oeuvre consists of 45 books that were published over a span of 54 years. Nearly 20 of which I’ve read. Including two of the six that have been sent to their rooms without supper for bad behavior: And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street (his first book published in 1937), and If I Ran the Zoo (1950).
The former, I bought for myself, as my kids by that point were far into adulthood. Apparently, I was heading in the other direction. But I was curious as it was his first book, and that it was about Mulberry Street, which was not far from where I grew up. But what did I think I would see there? This?
Turns out the Mulberry Street referenced in the book, is named after that in Seuss's hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts. And here on the left, is something else I certainly didn’t see.
The yellow skin and pigtail from the original 1970's illustration—in response to sensitivities expressed at the time— were gone. As was the descriptive of that man scooting along.
The illustration to the right, is the revised version.
Is any of this coincidental or an aberration?
Quoting a 2019 Study, The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss's Children's Books…
Still, this has not been enough for current sensibilities. “He still has the slanted eyes and is still running along with chopsticks,” notes Professor Philip Nel, author of “Dr. Seuss: American Icon.”
If this sort of thing seems overly sensitive and excessive, it’s not as if violence, hate crimes and harassment of Asian-Americans hasn't currently reached insane proportions. Not as if Asian-Americans haven't been targeted by misguided and dangerous people, to be somehow seen as responsible for this "CHI-na virus," this "Kung Flu." Wonder where these folks got that idea? It's not as if we’re speaking in hypotheticals; not as if this is a case of paranoia .
As to If I Ran the Zoo, I did read it to my kids. And even as a recovering Yuppie at the time, how could I not have noticed this grotesquery? Yet, I didn’t. But if I were African-American...?
“When characters of color are depicted, they appear as racial caricatures. 45 of color in all. And they were… “either subservient, exotified, dehumanized, or some combination of the three. Dr. Seuss’s characters of color drive carriages for whip-wielding white characters, dress in turbans and “rice paddy hats,” and never speak out loud. Most of them are Orientalist caricatures, and the two that aren’t are those African characters drawn as monkeys in If I Ran the Zoo.”
As an aside but pertinent here, Seuss is not the only American icon for the kid set, who had fallen into stereotyping black people. He has company in Walt Disney, to which this The Pastoral Symphony segment from Fantasia might attest. It has long since been edited out.
And in the same movie, as many will remember, we have the Chinese represented stereotypically once again. This time in the form of a circle of dancing mushrooms. And there are those conical hats again. As though that is the defining mark of Chinese people.
But I’ll explore Disney’s cultural and societal obliviousness more fully on another day. And how they are addressing some of it in their parks this year. Spoiler alert: The Jungle Cruise ride is taking an alternate route.
It is easy to poo poo all of this, when one is not the butt of a joke or being depicted in an unflattering stereotypical manner. And though I am an Italian-American, I’m sure that the American Italian Anti-Defamation League, and a particular cousin of mine, would not give me a pass on my unflattering Mulberry Street illustration back there. Which was intentionally inserted to re-emphasize the point. How does the old line go? If you slip on a banana peel, it’s comedy. If I slip on a banana peel, it’s tragedy.
But back to the liber non grata. In putting out a statement, Dr. Seuss Enterprises had this to say: “Working with a panel of experts, including educators, reviewed our catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of the following titles…”
Of course, that is the prerogative of a private company. And that is no small distinction. And they are not crying "cancel culture!" At least not publicly. And one might wonder if economic considerations also came into play. As they so often do. Of Dr. Seuss’s 21 “Greatest Hits,” in terms of sales, updated to 2020, the “Springfield 6” are conspicuous by their absence from this chart. Obviously they were not big sellers.
Seuss book sales have gone through the roof since Dr. Seuss Enterprises decided to stop publication of those six aforementioned titles. Bought a few myself. Of course, for the grandchildren... I don't have.
Is it really cancel culture in the matter of Dr. Seuss? Or a knee-jerk excuse applied in misuse? It seems to me the latter. We're nowhere near, let alone on, that "slippery slope" we've oft heard tell. We're not talking: "Seuss today; The Bible tomorrow!"
39 of his books will still be available. Oh... and that's not counting this one that I didn't know existed (no joke) and only picked up last month. Though it should not, under any circumstances, be read by, or read to, young minds in development.
Word of the Month
sam·iz·dat noun
sa·miz·dat | \ ˈsä-mēz-ˌdät
clandestine copying and distribution of literature banned by the state,
especially formerly in the communist countries of eastern Europe.
Used in a sentence
The Pentagon Papers is a samizdat for which Daniel Ellsburg is best known.
On the Backlot of Paramount at Dusk
Scene 1.
A skyline consumed by devilish flame?
Or painted backdrops; facades at play.
They make magic here. The moguls bray
at the ghost of Rudolph Valentino.
Scene 2.
Leaving the “Top Gun” client behind—
the day rushing by in bullet points,
budgets and bottom lines,
I, a mad man; the ad biz my game.
A board game played minus the board.
Scene 3.
Wending my way down faux streets
Mom 'n Pop storefronts
and stoops and signs
a slight bias noted in a Hopperesque
barber pole—
I stop to tie my shoe atop
a prop
of a fire hydrant.
This is The Naked City.
Eight million stories at least
going back to LaGuardia days
of baloney on Silvercup
with Hellmann’s mayonnaise.
Can the end of the war be far behind?
The one that was winnable
without losing our minds?
Yes, with Audie Murphy
at the front on our side.
Scene 4.
Passing the corn rows
of khaki bungalows
blinking with light bulbs
of infant ideas—
the next box-office blockbuster
being born back there?
Scene 5.
Freeze frame the moment
to partake of the air
on this evening so balmy
that palm trees stand caught
as if deer in the headlights.
Not a single frond quivers
on nature’s green screen.
Scene 6.
The King Kong gate looms large up ahead
to separate fantasy from traffic.
Its guardian,
no St. Peter he,
is a man too young
too oblivious
to the abduction by natives
of a screaming Fay Wray.
All is quiet on his western front.
Scene 7.
The shuffling and scuffling
of shoes from a sideral path
footfalls intent on closing the gap
and gaining ground.
I turn around.
Just as suddenly I’m wearing …
Scene 8.
…a Dobb’s fedora.
I pause to work the wide brim
redefine the crease
straighten my broad tie
with its bold pattern
in Trylons and Perispheres.
I light up a Lucky.
Then rush to my car
with Veronica Lake in tow
and speed away with an inch to spare
as the gate closes behind.
In hot pursuit,
that two-bit gumshoe
who’s been tailing me
since that day when reality
was gunned down in cold blood.
I’m still a suspect; a bum rap.
A sax out of nowhere wails on cue
as dusk falls behind a curtain
into darkness.
To continue...
finito
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