Welcome to Muleshoe; Now Keep It Moving...

 “Oh crap.” 

I’m not privy to the tone you imparted on those words as you read them just now in your head. And I am not normally one to try to dictate to a reader how to read the words I have written.

But in this particular case, tone matters. A LOT.

Look at the words on the page (or screen) again. They end with a period, not with an exclamation point. So the valence on the words, while still negative, is not anything too highly pitched. 

Imagine you reach into the fridge, say, and take out a quart of milk. You take the lid off, pour a splash into some coffee you have fixed for a friend who has stopped by on a pleasant Saturday morning to say hi and shoot the breeze. As you go to put the lid back onto the milk, you drop it and it rolls a few feet away under a kitchen island. The island is a good six inches off the floor and the lid will be very easy to retrieve.

The tone you should use when reading that first line up above is the same tone you might use when you drop the cap: ever-so-slightly put out, but not really even mad.

Now that you know this, let me start again.

“Oh crap.”

It was February 1990 and I was behind the wheel of my tan 1970 Plymouth Valiant, driving west on state Route 84 just outside of Muleshoe, Texas. There was a hornet in the car and I had a strong preference that the hornet be outside the car. Without thinking, I reached with my left hand for the window crank and gave it a turn. As soon as I did, the window fell into the door with a solid clunk I knew all too well. 

The Valiant, (named Fuad) was a solid old car with a reliable slant-six engine. He was nothing fancy, but he served me well and I loved him. One of his quirks was the driver’s side window would fall off its track and into the door any time you touched the window crank. I had gotten very good about not touching the crank, but every once in a great while I would forget—usually when my brain was focused on something more pressing—like a hornet by my head.

Whenever the window would fall into the door I would have to pull over, get the specially-folded wire coat hanger I kept on the floor in the back for just such an occasion, and fish the window up out of the door and back onto its track. It didn’t take long. That morning outside of Muleshoe was no exception and I was back on the road in no time, heading for Santa Fe, New Mexico and my friend Amy Schwendimann.

Amy was Stop #2 on my first cross-country road trip, which eventually covered more than 7,000 miles over two months and 21 states. Stop #1 had been my college friend Adam Faschan in Baton Rouge, Louisianna, whom I had not seen for more than two years.

I graduated from college in May of 1987 and shortly after that found myself in the United States Peace Corps in Yemen. This was long before cell phones and the internet and during my two years in Yemen the only way to communicate with my friends was by letter. So by the time of my road trip in February 1990 I had not seen any of my college friends for a long time. Adam was in Baton Rouge to get his Ph.D. in civil engineering at LSU and I think he appreciated the opportunity to show me around New Orleans to hear some music and drink some hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s.

When I left Adam’s small Baton Rouge apartment early in the morning and headed west I had a real feeling of excitement. I was 24, alone, in a car with a working AM/FM radio, and $2000 in my bag. I had never taken a real bona fide American road trip and here I was, doing it! I had hitchhiked all around Yemen, and that came with its own feeling of blissful lost-ness. But I had never experienced the vast freedom that comes with an open road, a full tank of gas, and a vague plan.

Fuad had no tape player, so I was at the mercy of whatever stations my radio could pull out of the sky. That particular morning near Muleshoe I had found a Top Forty station and the B-52s’ song “Roam” was playing. It felt like the universe was talking directly to me. And, maybe because of that, my foot got just a tad heavy on the gas pedal and I was doing 37 in a 30 m.p.h. zone.

I saw the Bailey County Sherriff’s car parked sneakily on the side of the road just as his red lights went on and his siren revved up. He pulled onto the road right behind me and I pulled off of the road as soon as I was able. I had Delaware plates and was probably the first car from Delaware that Sherriff had ever pulled over. As he talked on his radio I fished out my registration and insurance card. He came up to my car and told me to roll down the window.

I told him it was broken and that I would have to open the door. This raised his hackles a bit. He stepped back, put a hand on the butt of his gun, and told me to open the door slowly and step out. I did, and after that the interaction was polite and almost pleasant, though I did get a $40 ticket. I got back in Fuad and prepared to drive away. As I turned the radio back on, I heard a tap on the window and unthinkingly went to roll it down.

THUNK!

The sound made me say again “oh crap.” It made the Sherriff jump a little and grab for his gun. 

I stuck my head out the now-empty window and said, “Sorry about that—it’s broken.”

“Startled me,” he said. “I forgot to give you back these.” 

He handed me back my license and registration and wished me a safe trip.

 

I’m not sure if his well-wishes had any impact on my trip, but I did indeed have a safe and amazing trip.

Open Letter to Benjamin Netanyahu

 Dear Benjamin Netanyahu,

What the actual fuck are you doing?

Your policies are leading—directly—to the deaths of tens of thousands of humans. You know it is happening and yet you let it continue. Not only do you let it happen, you ORDER it to continue.

What’s that line the spokespeople always say? “The Israeli Defense Force is the most moral army in the world…”

Putting aside the discussion about whether ANY army is moral, your policies have made this sound like something out of George Orwell. “Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. War is Peace.”

Tens of thousands of non-combatants are stuck in a patch of land measuring 141 square miles. This is the size of Denver, Colorado. Your policies have led to the deaths of 65,000 citizens of the Gaza Strip. That is the equivalent of 90,000 peaceful Coloradan men, women, and children being brutally killed by a foreign government.

Before the savage and inexcusable Hamas attacks of October 8, 2023 Gaza, had a population of 2,200,000 people. A few thousand of the people killed have been members of Hamas. For argument’s sake, let’s say 5,000 of the Palestinian dead were members of Hamas. That leaves 60,000 non-combatant Palestinians dead because of your policies, Benjamin. That does not sound very moral. Certainly not “the most moral.”

Yes—I know that Hamas hides like cowards under hospitals and in schools. This is not about Hamas, really. It’s not about Israel, either. Or Israelis. Or Jews. Or Judaism.

This is about YOU. And your policies. You are pursuing policies that are crimes against humanity. YOU—Banjamin Netanyahu—are a war criminal.

You have killed roughly 3% of the civilian population of Gaza so that you do not have to face corruption charges or take responsibility for the intelligence failures that led to Oct. 8. You, Benjamin Netanyahu, are a weak and cowardly man willing to kill thousands to avoid accountability.

Sometimes I wish I believed in the Christian afterlife, Benjamin Netanyahu. That way I could trust you would experience the consequences of your abhorrently evil policies. But I don’t. And you probably won’t.

I mean this sincerely when I say “Fuck You Benjamin Netanyahu,”

 Chris

Justified?

On October 23, 1998 a man named James Kopp lurked in the dark outside the Amherst, NY home of Dr. Barnett Slepian. Kopp had a rifle, and when he saw Slepian through the doctor’s kitchen window, he took aim and fired. 

Dr. Slepian was hit in the chest and died two hours later.

Kopp was motivated by his belief that Dr. Slepian, who performed abortions, was himself a murderer and needed to die.

I have two important questions for you:

1) Do you have any sympathy for James Kopp and what he did? 

2) Do you think of him as a murderer?

Okay, now how do you feel about Luigi Mangione? Do you have any sympathy for him? Do you think of him as a murderer?

If your answers about Kopp differ from your answers about Mangione, then you should think a bit more. If one is a hero to you and the other a murderer then you are playing some serious cognitive games with yourself.

We will get what we deserve

I find it both laughable and unsettling when I scroll through Twitter and see the AI-generated images (popular on the Right) of Donald Trump with huge muscles and movie star good looks, wielding a machine gun, riding a lion, or decked out in a Superman cape. 

Donald Trump is no Superman. It is pretty obvious by now that he is a petty little man who has never been loved by anyone. I do not say this mockingly but instead with much pity. Donald Trump has never known one second of what it feels like to be loved simply for being himself. When I let myself imagine what that absence might do to a person, it gives me real pain.

In Donald Trump’s case, this lack of love was combined with an abusive and impossible-to-please father, a self-involved mother, and an enormous fortune. His bluster and fake tough guy persona are efforts to impress and hide the needy child at his core. If you have ever seen the animated movie Spirited Away, then you know that Donald Trump is much more like the oversized destructive baby named Boh than like Superman. He demands attention and revels in chaos.

The past nine years, ever since that ridiculous ride down that ridiculous golden escalator, have left me increasingly saddened by my fellow Americans. So many good people seem to have adopted a petulant huckster as their hero. And no matter what he says or does, his idolators lap it up. I have never seen a more obvious example of the old adage about it being easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled.

Donald Trump has never cared about anyone other than Donald Trump. He does not care about the people who work for him. He does not care about the people who voted for him. And he certainly doesn’t care about doing what is right for the American people. He uses people until they are squeezed dry and then he throws them away. There is nothing heroic about his narcissistic behavior. Nothing.

Compare Donald Trump to Jimmy Carter. Carter attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis during World War II, ready to serve the country wherever he was needed. He graduated in 1946 and was stationed on submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He then did graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the nation’s second nuclear submarine.

Donald Trump avoided serving in the armed forces during Vietnam by getting a doctor to attest to the “fact” that he had bone spurs in his feet. (Funny how those bone spurs never seemed to bother Donny one day of his entire adult life since…).

Jimmy Carter married Roslyn Smith in 1946 and they remained married for more than 70 years, clearly still in love right up until she died in 2023. Donald Trump has had numerous wives and numerous affairs and treats women like he treats everything else in the world—like objects to be used until he is done with them.

President, Jimmy Carter locked himself away at Camp David with Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat and refused to let them leave until they had signed an historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. He used the power of the United States to champion human rights throughout the world. He created the Department of Energy to focus on making America more energy independent. He doubled the size of the national park system and tripled America’s designated wilderness areas.

Donald Trump in his first term gave the top 1% a massive tax cut (increasing the national debt by TRILLIONS of dollars), weakened environmental protections for America’s land, air, and water, weakened relationships with long-time allies around the globe, and praised Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban, and Kim Jung Un. He also promised to repeal and replace Obamacare and to create and pass a much-needed infrastructure package to rebuild America’s aging highways, ports, airports, and bridges. Needless to say, he reneged on both of these promises.

(Obamacare is still the law of the land and Joe Biden finally did in fact pass an infrastructure bill.)

After losing the election of 1980 Jimmy Carter went on to live another 44 years. He spent those years working to make the world a better place. His Carter Foundation eradicated a terrible disease called river blindness in many countries. He worked to shine a light on unfree and unfair elections around the world. And he helped build houses with Habitat For Humanity.

When Donald Trump lost the election of 2020 he lied about it. He whined and moaned for four solid  years about the unfairness of it all. In other words, he remained true to the petulant, spoiled, insecure brat at his core. 

And now here it is, almost January 20, 2025 and Donald Trump is about to be sworn in again as President of the United States of America. At this point all I can say is that we get what we deserve. We have voted for a proven failure to lead our country. There is something rotten at the core of America these days. Rather than choosing to be led by people like Jimmy Carter, we are opting for Baby Boh.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

I’ll tell you some of what I predict will go wrong. These are in no particular order:

Most cabinet picks and other high positions will be approved by the Senate. Trump will have the Supreme Court, Senate, and a closely-divided House all in Republican control. And still he will not act on his “concept of a plan” for healthcare. Too many people benefit from the ACA for him to really mess with it.

He will push all of his people to ramp up deportations and the actual results will not come even close to his promise to deport millions of people. It will become clear that behind the scenes Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and many wealthy GOP donors are lobbying Trump to be very selective in his deportations so that the building trades don’t grind to a halt.

Likewise, wealthy GOP donors and some Senators will push Trump hard to scale his tariff plan waaayyyyyyy back.

If Trump ignores their pleas and institutes widespread tariffs, prices (and inflation) will rise, unemployment will rise, and China and Russia will strengthen their alliance while the US loses even more global influence. The European Union will put some real distance between the US and EU and the US will be bargaining from an increasingly weak position.

The quality of the air and water in America will decrease as Trump loosens environmental regulations.

Trust in vaccines will plummet even further as RFK, Ladapo, Joe Rogan, and other fully unqualified people steer public health policy and discussions. Deaths of children from previously-controlled diseases will spike.

Likewise, maternal mortality rates will rise.

On the world stage, Vladimir Putin will feel emboldened to do whatever he wants to do—this will mean harsher crackdowns on any perceived dissent within Russia and more overt meddling in other countries.

Same is true for Netanyahu in Israel (if he manages to stay out of jail). He may feel empowered to annex parts of the West Bank and starve Gaza.

Christian Nationalists in the US will push as hard as they can to get Christianity into schools and other publicly-funded realms.

The Justice Department will see mass resignations as Trump uses it to punish anyone he sees as an enemy.

Trump will leave office on January 20, 2029 with approval ratings around 23% and will be widely viewed as the worst two-term President in our long history.

Predictions for January 2025 to January 2029

I am posting this here as a place to have these on record. Skip to the bottom for a summary.

In no particular order:

Most cabinet picks and other high positions will be approved by the Senate. Trump will have the Supreme Court, Senate, and a closely-divided House all in Republican control. And still he will not act on his “concept of a plan” for healthcare. Too many people benefit from the ACA for him to really mess with it.

He will push all of his people to ramp up deportations and the actual results will not come even close to his promise to deport millions of people. It will become clear that behind the scenes Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and many wealthy GOP donors are lobbying Trump to be very selective in his deportations so that the building trades don’t grind to a halt.

Likewise, wealthy GOP donors and some Senators will push Trump hard to scale his tariff plan waaayyyyyyy back.

If Trump ignores their pleas and institutes widespread tariffs, prices (and inflation) will rise, unemployment will rise, and China and Russia will strengthen their alliance while the US loses even more global influence. The European Union will put some real distance between the US and EU and the US will be bargaining from an increasingly weak position.

The quality of the air and water in America will decrease as Trump loosens environmental regulations.

Trust in vaccines will plumet even further as RFK, Ladapo, Joe Rogan, and other fully unqualified people steer public health policy and discussions. Deaths of children from previously-controlled diseases will spike.

Likewise, maternal mortality rates will rise.

Women will be raped and assaulted at higher rates.

On the world stage, Vladimir Putin will feel emboldened to do whatever he wants to do—this will mean harsher crackdowns on any perceived dissent within Russia and more overt meddling in other countries.

Same is true for Netanyahu in Israel (if he manages to stay out of jail). He may feel empowered to annex parts of the West Bank and starve Gaza.

Christian Nationalists in the US will push as hard as they can to get Christianity into schools and other publicly-funded realms.

The Justice Department will see mass resignations as Trump uses it to punish anyone he sees as an enemy.

 

TL;DR. Inflation and unemployment will rise, most measures of public well-being will fall, America will lose much of our standing and power in the world. And though it all Trump will blame everyone but himself.

“Sorry about this, Congressperson Mace…”

“Sorry about this, Congressperson Mace…”

“Uh—that’s CongressWOMAN Mace, thank you very much!”

“Before I can let you in, Congressperson Mace, I’m going to need to perform a visual-and-possibly-manual inspection of your, um, well, you know…”

“What!? That’s utterly ridiculous. You know me. You’ve seen me here since I was elected to the House of Representatives from the great state of South Carolina in 2021. I was the first woman elected to the House from South Carolina EVER. Now let me in—I need to pee. We’ve been debating the Law for the Protection of American Blood and American Honor Act for hours and I really cannot hold it another minute. ”

“I can’t do that, Congressperson Mace. Speaker of the House Johnson—who, as I found out a bit earlier is VERY appropriately named—has decreed that ‘Women deserve women’s only spaces.’  So, before I can let anyone into the Big Congressgirl’s Private bathroom I’m going to need to see what you got in that skirt.”

“That is ridiculous—get out of my way. Now!”

“As much as I would love to make way so that you can relieve yourself in peace, these times demand that I see your genitalia.”

“Look—when I was the first female to graduate from the previously all-male Citadel in 1999 nobody demanded to see my…ladybits…before they let me in.”

“I understand that, Congressperson. But times have changed and now people want proof of biological sex. (Some people, anyway.) So you’ll need to Stop-Drop-and-Show. (Do you like that? I came up with it myself. Get it? STOP—that’s self-explanatory. DROP—like, drop your pants or your skirt. And SHOW! Like, Show me what you got.)”

“Yeah. I get it. But there’s no way I’m going to do it. Now let me in.”

“No can do, Congressperson. I’m gonna need to see some incontrovertible proof that you really are the first female to graduate from the Citadel—and I’m not talking about a framed diploma.”

“This is absurd. I. Am. A. Woman. Any fool can see that. And I need to pee.”

“I understand that it might be frustrating to have someone question your gender, but Donald Trump was elected with a mandate to make America great again. And “America” necessarily includes the women’s bathrooms IN America. So, are you going to show me what is in your underwear, or am I going to have to do a manual inspection?”

‘What!???!”

“According to rules set down by Speaker Johnson—(a REAL man if ever I saw one, especially for such a short guy!)--and I quote ‘if a person of unproven gender seeks entry to a bathroom reserved for people of just one gender, said person will be given the opportunity to prove their maleness or lack of maleness by showing their genitalia to a proper authority. If said person refuses to show his or her genitalia, a mandatory manual inspection is required before entry to previously denoted bathroom.’ So, if you won’t drop your drawers I’m going to have to feel for myself what you got hiding down there.”

“This is a total invasion of my privacy and I refuse. Now let me through!”

With this, Congressperson Mace tries to shove past the brave Capitol Police Officer assigned to bathroom duty just off of the floor in the House chambers. In the struggle and scuffle, Congressperson Mace loses control of their bladder and pees on the floor. Nancy Mace then slips in the pee and falls so that her skirt is hiked up far above her waist and it becomes clear to one and all that she is indeed CongressWOMAN Mace.

”You are cleared for entry, Congresswoman Mace. Have a great day!”

The cruelty IS the point

 

I NEVER ask people about their reproductive plans. And when I hear someone ask any variation of the question, it makes me want to pull them aside and put duct tape on their mouths. (“So…do you guys want a family?”)

There is no more painful minefield. Why would someone intentionally tromp through the emotionally explosive realm of infertility, miscarriages, abortions, and unaligned reproductive wishes with someone other than their partner? You never know what someone else is experiencing, so to conversationally ask if they are planning to have children strikes me as some of the worst casual cruelty a person can inflict.

I know couples who tried for years to conceive, with no success. I know women who have had multiple miscarriages. I know people who have divorced because they could not agree on whether to have children. People carry these things around through their days out in the world, but they don’t wear a sign. You can’t tell by looking at them.

So when I hear politicians like J.D. Vance and others, (who mostly seem to belong to the same party as J.D.), make a woman’s reproductive decisions the object of ridicule and scorn it makes me angry.

It also leaves me shaking my head in disbelief. Why would an allegedly smart person purposely poke at some of the tenderest emotional pain people can feel? Is he trying to lose votes? I don’t get it.

Unless, of course, (just like with his running mate), the cruelty IS the point.

My first--and worst--interview

 

The first interview I ever did as a professional writer started out as the worst interview I ever did as a professional writer. 

 

I had recently transitioned out of a 20-year teaching career and into a provisional position creating “web content” for an Ivy League college of engineering. The school had just paid several hundred thousand dollars to a marketing firm to create a new brand for the college. They needed lots of written stories for their website to highlight the new tagline and signed me to a six-month contract.

 

For years I had harbored quiet aspirations that someday I would be a professional writer. So it was thrilling to suddenly find myself getting paid to be that very thing. Additionally, I have always been a total science geek, and in my new position I found myself surrounded by professors and students doing cutting edge work in fields as diverse as biomedical, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering.

 

Driving to campus shortly after starting the position, I heard on the local public radio station that one of the faculty members at the college had just been named a MacArthur Genius. I parked the car, went straight to my boss’s office, and proposed writing a profile of the newly-minted genius. She went for the idea and I emailed the professor right away, requesting an interview.

 

He was game, and we agreed to meet the following morning in his office.

 

It took me longer than it should have to find his office. It was in a building on a part of campus I had not yet been to. Worse, the system they had used to number the offices in that building had no obvious logic. So I did not get to the genius’s room until the exact moment I was supposed to, which for me feels like being ten minutes late. I did not have time to take a deep breath, collect my thoughts, and calm down.

 

Still, I felt okay knocking and going in because I had spent a solid four hours the previous day finding out all I could about the professor and his work—which was in an area where physics and materials science overlap. It was a real slog for me to get through descriptions of the field in general and of his work in particular. But by the time I knocked on his door and pushed it open at his “come in,” I felt pretty good.

 

I felt ready.

 

In college back in the 1980s I had worked as an editor for the student newspaper and had developed a lifelong love of yellow legal pads. Twenty-five years later, when I was hired to be a writer, the first thing I did was go to Staples and buy a 10-pack of yellow legal pads. As I entered the professor’s office I clutched one of those pads, and it had the results of my hours of research written two-to-a-page in blue ink.

 

Remember—I had never conducted an interview and had no real idea of what I was doing. So I had written out interview questions on the yellow pages, one at the top of each page and one halfway down. I figured this would give me plenty of space to write down what the genius was saying and to capture any useable quotations. I assumed an interview would follow a logical progression, dictated by the questions asked. I was proud of the progression of questions I had crafted the previous day. (It may even have struck me that this yellow legal pad would end up in the science writer’s hall of fame one day in recognition of the brilliant way I had led the interviewee to unexpected and revealing places that shined a light on his particular genius…)

 

But as you can probably guess, that is not what happened. I had agonized over the first question, figuring it would set the tone for what followed. I didn’t want to be cliché and ask about where he was born or if he had been one of those kids who liked to take things apart. No, I wanted to ask something surprising that would get the reader right into his mind immediately. I had written and then crossed out literally dozens of questions before I settled on the one that I thought wouldn’t just break the ice but would instead shatter the ice and allow for the most amazing interview of this professor’s life.

 

He sat down; I sat across from him and let fly:

 

Q—“On my way to work a few days ago I heard someone on the radio call you a genius. And then again in my office I heard several other people refer to you with that same word: genius. It seems everyone is calling you a genius. What I want to know is, who do you think of as a genius?”

 

I should mention at this point that he was sitting cross-legged on a tattered couch, bare feet glowing an almost-unnatural white, hands clasping his knees, coke-bottle glasses magnifying his eyes so it looked like he was trying to melt me with his stare. He released his grip on his knees and crossed his arms tightly across his chest.

 

A—I’ve always hated the word “genius”…

 

And then he just trailed off into silence, alternating between eye contact and looking at his own feet.

 

I could feel the panic rising quickly in me as I looked at the next question I had planned to ask, and then at the one after that, and the one after that. It was one of the clearest “aha” moments I have ever experienced: I knew instantly that none of these preplanned questions were going to get me anywhere with him. He was closing down and I knew I had to come up with a Plan B and I had to do it fast.

 

To buy a little time I said, “Is that a Philly accent I’m hearing?” as my brain scrambled to find a way to get things back on track. I was flipping through my notes and trying desperately to remember what I had read about his research the day before, thinking maybe he would be more forthcoming about his research than he was about geniuses.

He said, “Yeah. I’m from Philly…but I didn’t think I had much of the accent. Are you from Philadelphia?” I told him I grew up just south, in suburban Wilmington, Delaware. I mentioned that one of my brothers had gone to Villanova. The genius had also gone to Villanova, so we chatted about that a little and I noticed that he had uncrossed his arms and relaxed the rest of his body a bit. We were having a conversation, but the stuff we were talking about was not anything I had scripted out. I could feel my wheels turning, trying to figure out how to get back on the track I wanted to be on.

 

But then a funny thing happened. I got curious about what he was saying about his time at Villanova. He mentioned punk rock and powerlifting and being a bouncer at a bar and doing terribly on standardized tests. So I asked him questions about those things. And his answers to those questions led to even more interesting places, and before long we were deep into a really enjoyable conversation that found its own natural way to his work and to the topic of genius.

 

I was scribbling notes furiously the entire time and by the end of the hour my hand hurt, but I felt really good about how the interview had gone. I went back to my office and typed up notes to myself. And then over the following week wrote a 1500-word profile that, to this day, is one of my favorite pieces of writing. I felt like I was able to capture something of the man that rang true. I sent him the first draft and then checked my inbox dozens of times over the six agonizing hours it took him to write back. You have to remember—this was the first real interview and profile I had ever done. 

 

I was 48 years old and about to be told by a genius whether I was any good at my new job. Finally, at 6:36 p.m., while getting ready to eat dinner, I heard the ding of an incoming email. It was from the professor and I opened it to find the first five words: “Hi Chris, This is awesome.”

 

This. Is. Awesome.

 

That short declarative sentence brought me so much joy. And confidence. And trust in myself. 

 

It is no exaggeration to say that his reply changed my life. From that day on, when people asked what I do for a living, I was able to say without any hemming or hawing or qualifiers “I am a writer.”

 

I never again went into an interview with a list of questions. I still do my research before I sit to talk with someone and I know there are certain things I want to get to, but that first disastrous five minutes of that first interview taught me something that guides every interview I do to this day: it is all about listening. 

 

I believe that when given a chance and a sincerely curious audience, most people really do like talking about themselves. And if you listen you can hear something in their voice when they seemingly parenthetically mention that they took ballet lessons for years or that they play the oboe or that they failed freshman physics. 

 

That little intangible something you can hear is your cue to ask more about that very thing. An interview is a conversation, not a Q and A session. And because it’s a conversation you have to leave space for it to go anywhere. You have to listen. Whether it is a slight Philly accent you hear, or maybe a passing reference to a great high school math teacher someone had, or a throw away comment about maybe starting a company someday, if you are listening and curious, you’ll follow up and sometimes that will lead to gold.

Not so alone...

I stepped into the bathroom of our little rental cottage to be alone for a quick moment and check-in with myself. I stuck out my tongue at the mirror, saw what I saw, and knew I was indeed NOT overreacting. I stepped back out into the living room and said as calmly as I could, “Erica, I don’t want you to panic, but we need to get me to a hospital.”

***************

We were in the Red House Area of Allegany State Park in far Western NY, staying in one of the cottages the park rents out. The weekend cross country ski trip was a Christmas gift I had gotten for me and Erica and it had been going pretty well up until that point. We had our two golden doodles with us, there was fresh snow, and we were both enjoying the feeling of being on a little getaway with no schedule and no responsibilities.

Erica and I don’t take enough of these small trips. It can be hard with 12 chickens, three dogs, and demanding jobs—but “hard” is not the same as “impossible.” And even just 36 hours away from home to catch a concert or take a hike or strap on some skis can go a long way toward recharging our batteries.

This trip was definitely doing that until I sampled one of the mixed chocolates we had picked up along with a few other groceries at the store in Salamanca the previous evening. Within seconds of biting into a chocolate cube with a large nut of some sort buried in the middle, I could feel my tongue starting to both ache and itch. It felt exactly like it had two years ago when I had an anaphylactic reaction to some pumpkin seeds a good friend of mine had ground up and used as the base for an-otherwise-delicious soup.

That particular night I had excused myself from the table, gotten in the car, and driven myself to the Emergency Room of the local hospital. That time, they took my vitals and instantly gave me some liquid Benadryl and some epinephrine. The meds worked, my tongue swelling stopped and then slowly reversed itself, and I went home a few hours later with a prescription for an EpiPen.

That very same EpiPen was now in the medicine cabinet of our first floor bathroom back in Ithaca—a three-hour drive away. Utterly useless. I had not packed it for our weekend getaway. In the time since that first anaphylactic reaction, I had gotten really good at spotting pumpkin seeds, aka pepitas, in all sorts of things. In fact, I was so good at recognizing the presence of pumpkin seeds that I got a bit cocky. I would never be dumb enough to eat those tasty little death nuggets again, right? Why would I need to pack the EpiPen?

The universe has a way of making you eat your words sometimes. And sometimes the way it tricks you into eating your words is by tempting you with chocolate. So in those early moments when I felt the reaction hitting at that cabin miles from help, I turned the box over and reread every ingredient on the list, confirming that pumpkin seeds were not part of the mix. But my tongue—and now my throat—were telling me something different.

In a matter of just two or three minutes we gathered car keys, wallets, cell phones, and dogs and got in the car to drive the snowy roads to the Park Police office that was ten minutes away.

As we drove I slipped into an old habit. I started talking to God, asking for things. I became very aware of the feeling of an audience in my head. It is a feeling I have had my entire life—probably going back to my earliest days as a young Catholic. 

***************

As a kid I took seriously the idea that God could see into my deepest heart of hearts and knew my fears, my desires, my motives, and my truest self even better than I did. I NEVER felt alone as a kid, even if I was alone. I always knew God was watching me. And judging me. You can imagine the guilt that built up over the years as I grew into an adolescent human being and then a teenage human being. Humans by our nature don’t always make the best choices. So whenever I would make some of those typical teenage bad choices about friends and alcohol and bullying and a million other things, I added another layer of guilt to the pile weighing on me.

By the time I was 25 I had decided that there is no all-powerful, all-knowing creator and that whoever it was I felt watching me was not going to come to some final judgment about my soul. Intellectually, I knew that the watcher was really just a being I created out of the internalized judgments of my family, my church, and my society. But still, it was hard to overcome 25 formative years of internalized guilt and self-loathing.

In fact, when I step back and really think about what has been the work of my adult life, it has been coming to peace with the knowledge that I really am alone. There is no being who sees into my heart. There is no cosmic judge I can look to for protection or for fairness. And there is no one who I need to satisfy but myself. 

I am alone. 

Every few years I come back to this epiphany, and each time it hits a little harder, drives a little deeper. There are still so many accumulated layers to get through to get back to the me that was me before I started drowning myself out with what everyone else said I should want and do and be like.

At the age of 58, I am finally starting to understand the repercussions of that awareness. So now, (when I am at my best), rather than running each impulse and thought and action through a sieve of God and family and society to see if it is acceptable, I can judge it for myself. Or—even better!—I can withhold judgment of it and just allow myself to feel it, whatever it is. That does not mean I am going to act on every impulse I have, but it does mean I will be more kind to myself and, in the process, I might even come to a better understanding of what is important to me and what I want out of life.

The most recent version of the epiphany came a few months ago when I was out for a longish Sunday run and I found myself on autopilot. After a few miles of the slow step-step-step on the small gravel of the Black Diamond Trail my mind was quiet and settling into a rhythm of its own. Rather than actively dictating what came into my brain, thoughts and feelings were rising up of their own accord. I like when this happens—it’s a sort of running meditation and it gives me clues as to what is below the surface, just waiting for a quiet space to float up into.

And what I heard that day was my actual internal voice telling me a truth that I needed to re-hear. “Hey—you know you’re alone, right? Remember?”

The tone was conversational, but the meaning was existential.

It was one sentence, but I knew what the voice was getting at. Loosely translated, I was telling myself (in a moment when I could truly hear it), “Remember? There is no God. And you get just the one life. You have wasted some (much?) of these 58 years caring far too much about external standards and ignoring yourself. If that’s okay with you, carry on. If not, you need to remind yourself every day—every hour, even—that you are alone. How you spend your minutes is up to you. Figure out what is bedrock important to you and do that. We only get the one life so, as RuPaul says, DON’T fuck it up.”

Since that day, I spend time every single day reminding myself that I am truly alone. And my life is mine to make of it what I will. Rather than being depressing, the daily reminder is both focusing and liberating. It helps me focus on what I want rather than spending so much energy putting myself through my people-pleasing gymnastics of trying to figure out what other people want me to be like. It frees me up to listen better to my own voice.

***************

So in that Park Police office in Allegany State Park, unable to swallow even a tiny Benadryl caplet because my tongue and throat were so swollen, I found myself talking to God. I was sitting in a chair, head down, eyes focused on the air a foot in front of my face, making myself breathe very deliberately through my nose as deeply as I could to pull the air in. My saliva couldn’t get down my throat, so it was backing up and out of my mouth and down my shirt until someone grabbed me a cup to spit in.

My blood pressure—usually around 130 over 80—was down to 80 over 40.

I was telling God that I didn’t want to die this way. I was asking God to make the ambulance get there sooner. But the only answer I heard back was my own voice saying “you are alone.”

And right at that moment Erica, who was with me the entire time, looked me in the eye and said, “They’re going to be here in just a couple of minutes. It’s going to be okay.” She must have been as scared as I was, but she was calm and certain and reassuring. I shook my head yes and went back to focusing on breathing one breath at a time. It was a very long fifteen minutes waiting for the EMTs, but once they got there, they got me on the gurney and into the ambulance and started a liquid Benadryl IV. Erica called me from inside the building before we even pulled away. I was able to tell her that the Benadryl was working and my tongue had stopped growing. My blood pressure was slowly climbing back to where it should be.

It was a slow drive to the hospital in Olean on snowy roads, but I could feel the meds working with each mile. By the time we got to the hospital I knew I wasn’t going to die. They kept me for observation for a couple of hours, the doctor on duty walking by every fifteen minutes to ask me to stick out my tongue. Each time I did it was closer to normal.

Erica got to the hospital as I was being discharged and we drove back to our rental cottage in the park. We talked a little, but it was a mostly quiet ride. I don’t know what Erica was thinking, but I was thinking about her and how she was there for me. She stayed calm, she reassured me, she was with me. In a thousand little ways she told me that I was not alone. And It struck me more deeply than it ever has before that she and I have been doing this for each other for almost 30 years now.

When we got back to the cottage, the dogs--Marj and Rosey--told me the very same thing—“you are not alone.” They were ecstatic in the way only dogs can be to see their people. Before going to bed I stepped into the bathroom to be alone for a moment. I stood at the mirror, stuck out my tongue for one more reassuring look, and then turned out the light and got into bed with Erica and Marj and Rosey---most definitely NOT alone.

(Editor’s note: we concluded later that it was a Brazil nut that caused the reaction.)

Drone War Crimes

Looks like our Forever War isn’t really over, even after the chaotic and terribly bungled withdrawal of the last US troops from Afghanistan. President Biden has said that we retain a strong “over the horizon” capability in the region to defend our interests and attack terrorists who are planning harm to America and Americans. 

That term—over the horizon—refers, in part, to our fleet of aerial drones armed with bombs, air-to-air missiles, and rockets. The pilots of these drones are often stationed at Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas, Nevada. They drive to work, park their cars, and then step inside to operate drones more than 7,000 miles away over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and who-knows-where-else. These pilots can fire missiles at vehicles and buildings on the ground to kill people and then drive home for dinner with their families. (Think about that for a second—they can kill people from thousands of miles away with the push of a button and then get back in their cars and drive home to see their kids. “Hi Mommy! How was work today!?”) 

The United States has been using drones in this way since the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, where Predator drones carrying anti-tank missiles were operated by the CIA. You can see why drone warfare is attractive to US Presidents. Drone surveillance and attacks can be carried out from a distance, without need for ground troops, special ops forces, or CIA operatives to be in-country and in danger. Americans don’t like when our soldiers are killed in faraway places during military engagements that don’t seem to have a clear purpose. 

The reaction to tens of thousands of US troops dying in Vietnam and the growing disillusionment with the Forever War in Afghanistan make it evident that these sorts of sacrifices of US lives for unclear goals are not supported by a large percentage of the US population. 

President Obama understood this and ramped up the US drone war exponentially compared to George Bush’s use of drones. Obama ordered ten times as many counterterrorism strikes as his predecessor. Many of these strikes were in countries the US was not at war with—Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. 

Can you imagine the uproar there would be in America if China were to start launching drone attacks in Afghanistan or Nepal or Thailand in the name of their national security? We would call them savage attacks and decry the inevitable killing of civilians. 

Policymakers like to describe these drone attacks as “surgical,” “precise,” and “targeted.” Generals and Presidents will sometimes take to a microphone to lament the sad loss of innocent lives that is inevitable when these sorts of attacks are launched. Military leaders use the term “collateral damage” to describe the terrible deaths and maimings of unintended victims of these attacks. But in the very next breath they will talk about the threat posed by the intended victim, as if that justifies the loss of innocent lives. 

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that between 2010 and 2020 there were more than 14,000 confirmed US drone strikes around the world. Those strikes have killed somewhere between 1000 and 2300 civilians in addition to the roughly 10,000 enemy combatants. (The numbers are hard to narrow down, since the US rarely confirms anything to do with these attacks.) 

Best estimates are that at least 300 children have been killed by US drones since 2010. 

This all came to mind today as we mourn on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on innocent US civilians simply going about their lives on that clear September morning. It was shocking—both the audacity of the plan and the fact that civilians were targeted. It lit a righteous (and justified) desire for revenge. 

Alongside the remembrances of 9/11, I saw in the paper today a report that the people killed in the US drone attack outside of Kabul Airport a few weeks ago were most likely NOT carrying explosives. It somehow seems fitting that the final missile launched in the 20-year US war in Afghanistan targeted a man—Zemari Ahmadi--who worked for a US aid group. He had placed canisters of water in his trunk to bring to his family. His car was hit by a missile launched from a Reaper drone, killing the driver and ten others in the vicinity. Seven of those ten were children. 

If you are an American and the loss of close to 3000 people on 9/11 makes you angry, think of how the people in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and Afghanistan must feel when their neighbors and children are killed by US drone strikes. 

Four US Presidents have made the calculated decision to rely on drones to do the dirty work of war. And in so doing they have killed hundreds of civilians. George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have launched thousands of attacks killing hundreds of civilians. To me, all four men are war criminals. 

We like to see ourselves as a beacon on a hill, a shining example, a nation with the moral authority to lead the world. And at our best we are all these things. 

The Drone War is us at our worst. It kills innocents, it fosters hatred for America in the non-combatant populations of these countries, and it does terrible moral injury to the pilots of these drones back in Nevada. We as a nation are asking them to do our dirty work and just keep it to themselves. We don’t want to see the blood on our hands and four US Presidents have gone along with the ruse. 

On this twentieth anniversary of 9/11, while I mourn the dead in the World Trade Center towers and in the Pentagon and on Flight 93, it is clear that we need to stop. We need to stop raining death down on civilians. We know what it feels like and it is simply time to stop.

Vote Like Somebody's Life Depends On It

 

It is not hyperbole to say that November’s Presidential Election in the United States is the most consequential election we have had in many years. Some people might argue that 2016 was more consequential, but I disagree. In 2016, we could still hope that maybe the Office of the President would work some magic on Donald Trump---that he would come to understand the importance of empathy and kindness and compromise and expertise and actual leadership.

 

Sadly, rather than the Office magically changing Donald Trump for the better, his presence has tainted the Office and done actual long-term damage to the country. He has shown himself to be singularly unqualified to be President. To him, everything is about raw power. To Donald Trump, you do something simply because you can, not because it is right thing to do. He is a crude, small person with mean instincts, little curiosity, and no heart.

 

Now that we have all seen who he is, with no room left for interpretation or spin, this November’s election has become a referendum on the soul of America. It will answer the question: What kind of a country are we?

 

To choose four more years of uninformed and destructive policies, belittling language, craven kissing up to dictators, personal enrichment, and the politics of chaos would tell me that America is dead. We would no longer be the country I was proud to represent as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Yemen.

 

If you have watched the past four years and you are satisfied with the job Donald Trump has done, then I cannot change your mind. All I can ask of you is that you stay home on Election Day.

 

If, however, you are eligible to vote and are thinking about voting for someone other than Joe Biden or Donald Trump—or not voting at all---please read the next few paragraphs.

 

Please.

 

Because the future of our country is at stake. If you are thinking about not voting, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE think again. There are many people whose lives will be worse if Donald Trump wins. And by “worse” I don’t mean that their taxes might be a little higher or that there might be some policy changes that make life a little bit harder for them. I mean worse as in they will feel unsafe. I know many Trump fans like to make fun of people’s feelings, but by “unsafe” I mean truly at risk for maltreatment and harm. They will feel like the country they live in actively dislikes them and wants to hurt them. And they would be right.

 

It is no exaggeration to say that we are on the brink of fascism in this country. Donald Trump is a wannabe strongman who thinks the way to be a good leader is to force your will on anyone who will not do what you want them to do. He is ignorant of American history, has no idea what the Constitution actually says, and seems to believe a President should be able to do whatever he wants to do.

 

This is why he sides with bad cops when they abuse their power. You can hear the wheels turning in his head—“If those people had just done what they were told to do, they’d be fine.” This is the argument of people who can expect to be treated fairly by the system. Many people in the United States today have no expectation of fairness from the system—and they are smart to feel this way. The deck is stacked in this country against the poor, against the gay, against the person with an accent, against people with dark skin, against anyone who makes the white power structure feel threatened.

 

If you are thinking of not voting, please reconsider and think about the people who need your support and your protection. With the small effort it would take to go and vote for Joe Biden, you can help protect people who, through no fault of their own, are at risk in a second Trump term. You don’t even have to go anywhere to vote. You can do it from home with a mail-in ballot. PLEASE think about this as you decide whether to vote.

 

If you are thinking about voting for someone other than Joe Biden or Donald Trump---especially if you live in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, or Iowa---PLEASE hear me out. I have to be blunt because this really matters: your philosophical purity is less important than your Black neighbor’s life. It really is. So please consider voting for Joe Biden instead of anyone else. I know it feels wrong and maybe even painful to vote for someone as corporatist and middle-of-the-road as Joe Biden, but, if you are white and leaning third party, please understand that this particular election IS NOT ABOUT YOU.

 

This is the election where you get to prove that other people’s lives matter by voting as if their lives depend on it. Because they just might.

The Murder of Ahmaud Arbery

Right now, Ahmaud Arbery should be wondering if his parents got him anything for his 26th birthday tomorrow. What with the corona virus and the recent lifting of the lockdown policies in his home state of Georgia and the general nervousness about social distancing, maybe his mother and father would not have had the time or the willingness to venture out into the world to find their son a present.

Ahmaud should be having these thoughts as he himself ventures out and takes a run from his home in Brunswick, Georgia, through Satilla Hills, and back to Brunswick. These runs give him time to think. They also keep him in shape for that day when (maybe) he finally takes the last step and becomes a boxer.

Tragically---criminally—Ahmaud Arbery is not wondering anything today.

Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by a father and son who saw him jogging through Satilla Hills, assumed he was a burglar, chased him down in their truck, and shot him. This happened almost three months ago: A black man went for a jog and was killed by two white men who assumed he was a thief.

This happened back on February 23, 2020---roughly 75 days ago. Most of us are just hearing about this now for one reason: there is video of the shooting. And that video was leaked in the past few days. The video has since gone viral and the murder has received national and international coverage. Before the video came out the killing had not made much of an impression beyond Georgia.

This is 2020, not 1897. Black men and women were lynched in the past under all sorts of pretenses. According to the American Social History Project, “Across the South, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929, according to the 1933 book The Tragedy of Lynching, for such alleged crimes as ‘stealing hogs, horse-stealing, poisoning mules, jumping labor contract, suspected of stealing cattle, boastful remarks’ or ‘trying to act like a white man.’ One was killed for stealing seventy-five cents.”

Ahmaud Arbery was lynched because two white men with deep ties to local law enforcement decided on the spot to grab their guns and be judge, jury, and executioner---all in the span of just a few minutes.

And those two white men? Surely they were charged with murder, right? Or at the very least arrested?

Nope. Not one thing has happened to them yet. The local prosecutor has finally recommended that a grand jury be given the evidence and asked to approve charges. Due to the corona virus, a grand jury cannot be convened until June 12.  By then, the murderers will have been walking around free for almost four months AFTER killing a man in cold blood.

If I were a black man, I imagine I would live my life full of fear and anger about a culture and a system where shocking injustices like this happen far too often. How many times do they happen but there is no video so nobody ever hears about them? It took almost three months for this video to come out, even though the local police had it since the day Ahmaud Arbery was murdered.

This is America.

When will it stop? When will White America stand up and say “Enough is enough”? Black Americans are not the problem here. The problem is a deeply-entrenched system with the wrong priorities. Protecting the status quo should not be Job One of law enforcement and the criminal justice system, yet far too often that is the case.

And since the status quo benefits White America far more than Black America, very little changes. Things will not change until White America refuses to go along with the system that leads to such skewed enforcement of the law. The White people of Brunswick and the rest of Georgia need to join the Black people already gathering to make it clear this is not about Black people venting anger---it’s about citizens finally getting mad enough to demand changes.

Far too often, people protesting racism in America are described as anti-American. (see: Colin Kaepernick) Do the people who use that term even get the meaning of what they are saying? They are saying “How dare you protest racism, since racism IS America.” In other words, to be against racism is to be against America.

White America, can we please just stand up and say “Enough. No more profiling and beating and killing in my name.”

I am going to run 2.23 miles tomorrow to celebrate the life and birthday of Ahmaud Arbery. It’s a mostly-meaningless gesture in the end, but it’s a thing I can do with my anger right now. And then I have committed to being more brave and outspoken about calling out racism when I see it in my own self, my own friends, and my own town. Asking Black Americans to end racism is like asking women to end sexism. It has to be White Americans that finally make a reckoning with this country’s deep-seated issues with race and demand changes from each other.

I will not mention the killers by name here. They do not deserve to be known. They deserve to be arrested and jailed.

Update: the father and son were arrested on Thursday, May 7, 2020.  https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/05/07/nation/arrests-made-shooting-death-black-man-after-outcry/