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 is 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.