DON'T PANIC.

Not that we don't have REASON to panic.  We do.  The unimaginable has happened.  But it just doesn't do any GOOD to panic.  And those panic hormones are very bad for your health.  So don't go there, if you can possibly avoid it.  

I'm stunned, grieving.  I'm glad my parents aren't alive to witness this.

I don't think people should leave the country.  I believe we have a responsibility to stay here and deal with this.  It's not like this is Albania or Kazakhstan that has elected some nutcase.  What the United States does affects the whole world.  But citizens of other countries have no control over what the U.S. does.  That's up to us, the citizens.  If the people who think Trump is a catastrophe move to other countries -- then there are fewer of us left here to change things for the better.  

It's different if someone is in danger of arrest or physical harm for their political beliefs.  Then they're entitled to flee.  But that is not the case now. 

So this is what life is presenting us with.  What are we supposed to do?  I don't know.  We have to figure that out.  We have to see what happens and figure out what to do. 

It's time to be kind to ourselves.  My friend Elizabeth said she was going to have an ice cream even though she knew it's what Weight Watchers calls "emotional eating."  I said, "If not now, when?"  As for me, I just ordered some things from a catalog:  two silly joke gifts for people I love, and something beautiful to hang in my garden.  

CANVASSING IN CARSON CITY

THE DAY HAS ARRIVED!  DO THAT VOTING THANG!

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO OTHERS IF YOU WISH.
READ ALL MY BLOGS AT WWW.TERRYBAUM.BLOGSPOT.COM .


Just got back from two days of walking around Carson City, Nevada, knocking on doors -- and I MEAN knocking because more often than not there was no doorbell -- talking to anyone who answered, about the election.  

Originally I planned to stay through the election.  But then I discovered that two days of tramping the suburbs of Carson City was enough.  After all, I'm almost 70!  I'm entitled to be tired!  I'm old!  Is this selfie not proof?  (I'm popping my eyes to make them as big as possible because they seem to have shrunk over the years.)

But now I think it was a big mistake coming back early.  I should have stuck with my original plan and stayed through the election.  What if we DO win Nevada?  How cool would that have been, to be there, at that moment?  Oh well.  Shoulda coulda woulda.  Such is life.  

The Carson City adventure began on Friday afternoon. I took BART to North Berkeley, where I met John Skonberg, who was driving to Reno.  Nan Weiner was also there for the ride.  The three of us had never met before.  We were being organized and sponsored by the Sierra Club's political arm, which was partially subsidizing our hotel rooms in Reno.  John was also getting 25 cents per mile.

John lives in Berkeley and works as a lawyer in a downtown SF firm.  Nan lives in SF and works a free-lance editor.  She had already canvassed in Reno.  John and I were newbies.  After checking in at the Silver Legacy Hotel, Resort, Casino, Spa and whatever, we went to meet a bunch of Nan's friends, also in Reno for canvassing, for dinner.  First we went to the wrong restaurant and then  we had to drive absurdly far, considering we'd just driven four hours.  John and I got very grumpy.  I told Nan that her friends had better be very charming or I would never forgive her.  I think that made her a little nervous.  I was just joking.  Sort of.  

Anyhow, it all turned out wonderfully.  I met lots of very charming people from San Francisco who asked to be put on my mailing list! Now, THAT'S what I call a good time!   

Then back to our very nice hotel rooms.  From the 27th floor, I had a lovely view of the Circus Circus clown tower!  What's not to like?  

I walked through the underground casino before going to bed.

Oh, how the mighty Trevi Fountain of Rome hath fallen!

Next morning, 9 am, we were at the office of FOR NEVADA'S FUTURE. This was a group of very smart, passionate progressive people who have been working long at organizing for the election.  Almost all the organizers were young and all the volunteers were old.

Nan, John, and me.  We were a good team.
 Unidentified Old Person in Background

I loved the organizers' hand-drawn charts of how how close they got to their weekly goals of convincing people to vote for Hillary and Catherine Cortez Masto, who is running for the Senate.

They were SO ORGANIZED!  They had water bottles, they had breakfast burritos (delicious), they had all the canvassing precincts divided into groups so that everyone in the same car could go to the same area.  They trained us, they inspired us. 

The Sacramento Bee was there to cover the meeting

The organizers told us wonderful stories:  Latino people lining up until 10 at night for early voting! And, for the first time, there was an early voting polling place on an Indian Reservation.  One organizer talked with a 103- year old woman who was so proud to vote FOR THE FIRST TIME on the Rez! 

Then we all got into our respective cars to go to Carson City, the state capitol, 32 miles from Reno, population 54,080 (ain't GoogleSearch wonderful?).

The landscape on the way was quintessential Wild West desert and and snow-capped mountains.

John dropped Nan and I off with our little maps and lists, and he went to his own precinct.  And we three walked and knocked and knocked and walked.  Mostly, folks didn't answer.  A beautiful weekend, and they were out.  We were in working class and poor suburbs, with wide streets.  The trees blazed yellow with Fall colors.  And always, the beautiful mountains in the distance.  

For two days, we walk-knocked from 11am-2pm, came together for lunch and check-in, and walk-knocked some more from 3pm-5:30pm.   The land was flat, but there were a lot of two or three-story apartment buildings.  At this late date, our voters had been pre-selected to be probable Clinton/Cortez Masto supporters.  

I recorded everything on my smartphone with the Minivan app.  This is my app map at the end of Sunday:

All the little balloons were white when I began.  Each balloon represents a different address, with the number of potential supporters there.  I would click on the balloon, and get the actual name and address.  After I walked, then knocked and hopefully talked, I filled in the response.  Blue: Supporter.  Orange: Not home.  Gray: Take off list (moved or refused to talk).

My most important job was to identify those supporters who had not already voted (lots of early voting in Nevada) so they could be urged to the polls on Election Day.  

My second most important job was to discuss with supporters the logistics of how and when they would be voting.  One Hillary supporter hadn't considered that, since he worked 10:30-7:00 and the polls close at 7, he had to vote before he went to work.

And, third in importance was trying to move undecided voters toward Clinton/Cortez Masto.  That of course was the most rewarding.    

I tried to discern what might be most important to a particular person.  With a woman whose living room was littered with toys, I talked about Hillary's support for paid parental leave after the birth of a child.  Guess how many countries, out of 185 surveyed by the International Labor Organization, DON'T have paid parental leave!  Guess!  I dare you!   THREE:  Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and...... Drum roll please.....THE UNITED STATES!  Cool shameful fact, huh?

I met one undecided young man for whom this must be the first Presidential election. He was very shy, but as we talked about climate change, he agreed that, yes, he had actually experienced the world getting warmer, that global warming was a reality -- a reality which Clinton AND Cortez Masto want to do something about. 

One man yelled that he wasn't voting because BOTH candidates were so horrible.  ME:  "Is there perhaps one that you consider a little less awful?"

HIM:  "No!"  Then I talked about my concern that Trump might press the nuclear button.  I told him about an op-end column I'd read by an army veteran who had been in the position of actually launching a nuclear warhead when he was in the service.  The veteran wrote that he and other veterans worry that Trump might start a nuclear war.  My voter grudgingly agreed that Trump was more inclined to incinerate the planet than Clinton. In a rational world, that would move him to the polls to vote.  I know, I know.  That's not the world we're living in at the moment.

One young Latina woman was soo thrilled to be voting for the first time!  We discussed logistics of getting to the polls on Tuesday, and I gave her my big Hillary button.  She also wanted a house sign "Because that jerk across the street just put up a Trump sign!"  I let For Our Future know, and I'm sure she got her sign. 

Yes,  using the App was confusing at first.  I was scared the first few times I knocked.  A few who answered the door were hostile.  Some scorned voting altogether, which made me really sad. Yes, it seems like an incredibly inefficient way to win an election. But the people who know these things say that it works.    

When I DID have a real conversation, I often left feeling I could have done better.  But, imperfect as it was, the time spent talking to people face-to-face seems very precious to me.  Even if I didn't actually convince anyone to vote for Clinton and Cortez Masto, those conversations have to be a positive thing.  After all, we are mourning the loss of civility.  To have a civil conversation with someone who doesn't agree with me is no small achievement -- for both of us. 

On Sunday night, we three exhausted canvassers returned home.  The next morning, I woke up, stepped into my backyard, looked up and saw this:

The world's a beautiful thing.  We have to start talking with people who don't agree with us, if we're going to save it.

This post was written with the help of Carolyn Myers.

I'M SCARED.

First:

HILLARYCLINTON.COM/EVENTS.  TYPE IN YOUR ZIP CODE TO FIND LOCAL EVENTS.  DO SOMETHING.  IF YOU'RE IN A CITY IN A BLUE STATE, YOU CAN PHONE BANK FOR SURE IN BATTLEGROUND STATES.

I admit I let down my guard.  After the last debate, I thought it was in the BAG!  I mean, COME ON:  

1. That disgusting tape of Trump boasting about his sexual assaults on women
2. All the women he had actually assaulted coming out of the closet
3. Hillary's damn good debate performance and Trump's smirking creepiness

I woke up the morning after the debate with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.  I absolutely GORGED myself for breakfast on New York Times op-eds predicting Trump's catastrophic defeat. 

Hey, let's face it:  even TRUMP thought he was a goner.  

  

Sooo.... I didn't phone bank as much..... (well, really not at all until this Monday night)....  I procrastinated on writing a blog..... I prioritized all the little and big details of my life over getting out the vote for Hillary.

I'm back phone banking.  I highly recommend it.  It can be very rewarding.  I had a great discussion with an undecided voter in Arizona on Monday.  And just identifying Hillary supporters is CRUCIAL.  This is what the Democratic Party does best:  GOTV -- Get Out The Vote.   In order to do that, the voters must be identified before election day.  You can be part of that.  Yes, you can.  

If you can actually get yourself to a battleground state to canvas and GOTV in person, that is super.  I'm going to Nevada with the Sierra Club on Friday and staying until it's over.  I'm hoping this knot in my stomach will untie itself if I'm putting boots on the ground with other folks.  

For folks in Northern CA who'd like to canvas in Nevada, call 415 977-5678.  The Sierra Club is arranging car pools and subsidizing hotel rooms.

I talked to my good friend J, who in despair had withdrawn into reading the Wizard of Oz books (there are a lot of them).  He'd had a frustrating experience phone banking -- sometimes people are angry that you called them.  That's a drag. But, as I pointed out to J, that does not mean that they are unaffected by the fact that a human being, an actual human being, has reached out to them with a political position.  J's decided to phone bank some more.

I understand the desire to escape.  I myself have been reading Zen koans to relax.  I'm thinking of switching to The Wizard of Oz. 

I mean, I'm not saying I'm working on the election 24/7.  But I got a knot in my stomach 24/7, a fear that the impossible, the irreversible might happen.

We cannot withdraw.  We cannot give up.  We cannot despair.  Oh, hell, alright -- DESPAIR!  I don't give a damn what you FEEL.  Just DO something!  Do something so that you can say "I did something."  

And it is so GOOD to be with others who are doing something.  Did you know that activism is an antidote to depression?  I swear to you, it IS. Despair is impossible when you're surround by like-minded people DOING something.  Well, at least it's much less likely.

HILLARYCLINTON.COM/EVENTS.  TYPE IN YOUR ZIP CODE TO FIND LOCAL EVENTS.  DO SOMETHING.  IF YOU'RE IN A BLUE STATE, YOU CAN PHONE BANK FOR SURE IN BATTLEGROUND STATES.

 Okay now, WHAT HAPPENED between the last debate and now?  

The slow poisonous drip drip drip of those stupid fucking emails.  Thank you, Putin and Wikileaks.  

Why does the NY Times put them on the FRONT PAGE??  

Why aren't people outraged at our "free" press being a pipeline for Putin's interference in this election?  Okay, maybe they have to cover it.  But the front page?

Why doesn't Obama fire the director the FBI for what HE did?  

Why doesn't somebody hold Trump accountable for his suggestion that someone assassinate the future President Clinton before she appoints someone pro-gun control to the Supreme Court? Isn't it a crime to threaten the life of the President, even when they DON'T do it on television for a mass audience of gun nuts?  

Why doesn't Hillary get up on a table and DEMAND Trump's tax returns?

Why?  Why?  Why?  How did we get here?

But this is not the time to devote ourselves to understanding what has happened.  This is the time for action.

HILLARYCLINTON.COM/EVENTS.  TYPE IN YOUR ZIP CODE TO FIND LOCAL EVENTS.  DO SOMETHING.  IF YOU'RE IN A  BLUE STATE, YOU CAN PHONE BANK IN BATTLEGROUND STATES.

A child handed me this wonderful brochure on Castro and Market.

Children were handing out these brochures to everyone.  This is the response of the 8th grade class at CDS Middle School to the election.

The topics covered are:Taxes, Schools & Jobs; Health Care; Climate Change; Policing; Gun Control; LGBTQ+ Community; Immigration; Foreign Policy.  

On each issue, they compare the positions of Clinton and Trump.  It's very informative, well-written.  I take it with me when I phone bank.  

We are doing this for the children, right?  That's always the most important thing.  The children.  The future.  They're entitled to a decent world, don't you think?  I'm not saying this as a parent, because I'm not.  I'm saying this as a human being.

DO SOMETHING.

AMBIVALENT HILLARY VOTERS: DON'T ASSUME THAT SOMEONE ELSE WILL STOP TRUMP!

My subject heading is stolen from Katha Pollitt's great article in The Nation Magazine.  Here's the link:

https://www.thenation.com/article/ambivalent-hillary-voters-dont-assume-someone-else-will-stop-trump-2/

I want to clarify who I am politically:  I am a Green Party activist who switched my affiliation to Democrat so that I could vote for Bernie Sanders.  I volunteered and donated to his campaign.  I have not worked for a Democratic Presidential nominee since 1992.  I feel this election is exceptional and it is close.  So I'm all in with Hillary.

Since I wrote my last blog, I've heard from many friends who were waaay ahead of me in volunteering for Hillary.  Bless you, bless you, bless you.  On the other hand, I've heard from one Hillary supporter who believes Bernie is the devil incarnate and one Bernie supporter who prefers Trump to Hillary.  And I've talked to several people who are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that Trump has no chance of winning, so they can just relax!

Ah yes, I remember those days.  I KNEW he was going to do himself in.   I didn't have to lift a finger.  That was a nice feeling.  Strangely, Trumpian self-destruction hasn't happened.  And if the recent loathsome revelations of his complete contempt for women haven't done it, then I don't expect anything else to work.  As of today, Hillary has a 5% lead.  Five percent is NOTHING!  That means if 3% change their minds, she's behind!  And before the "locker room" tape revelation, she had a 1% lead!  Folks, this is scary stuff.  I'm writing this at 4:15 am because I can't sleep.

There are three important phenomena (at least) going on to cause the cataclysmic possibility of a Trump presidency:

Trump himself.  You gotta hand it to him, he's a very successful demagogue (Demagogue:  a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular prejudices rather than by using rational argument.)

The people who support Trump.  This is harder for me to understand than Trump the individual.  But certainly some of them are justifiably angry at the economic changes wrought in their lives by globalization.  I also think people are terrified by cultural changes:  gay marriage, a black president, a woman presidential candidate, gender-neutral bathrooms.  Neither candidate talks about these issues, but I think a lot of Trump's support is fueled by people's unspoken anger at the symbolic and legal progress towards greater equality.  It's just too much!  (Frankly, even I have trouble with gender-neutral bathrooms, and I've been almost thrown out of women's bathrooms for being a man!)

Good old-fashioned misogyny.  Wow!  Who knew?  Or, how COULD we know, since contempt for women is the very air we breathe?  Even people who SUPPORT Hillary for President can't seem to refrain from debasing her!  The New York Times, which emphatically wants Hillary to win, said in a recent news article that Hillary appeared "cold" in the first debate.  Cold?  COLD?  COLD????  WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU HEARD A MALE POLITICAL CANDIDATE DESCRIBED AS COLD?  Never!  It's never happened!  Men running for office are not COLD.  They are serious, strong, authoritative, assertive, perhaps cool as in calm and level-headed --- but never COLD!  A woman cannot escape being constantly trivialized, even by her supporters.  We may have come a long way, baby, but we've got a looooong way to go!

Well.  I've been phone banking, joined by friends, and having coffee after.  Very enjoyable.  I will again be doing:

Wednesday:  1 West Portal, 5:30-8:00
Thursday:  540 Alabama (18th/Mariposa), 5:30-8:00.

PLEASE VOLUNTEER, WEAR A BUTTON, PUT UP A HOUSE SIGN, DO SOMETHING!  GO TO:

HILLARYCLINTON.COM/EVENTS!

Thoughts on Making My Mother into a Character -- and a Puppet!

MOM ON HER 90TH BIRTHDAY IN 2008

When I first started working on WAITING FOR THE PODIATRIST  (which is now AWAITING THE PODIATRIST) back in 2003, I had a sickening feeling that I was betraying my mother.

Every writer has to make a decision about where to draw a line when portraying the people close to them.  Some people are very up front in writing explicitly autobiographical plays or memoirs portraying  parents who are anything from a mixed bag to monstrous.  If that parent is still alive, that makes me very uncomfortable.  I'm a huge fan of Alison Bechdel's first graphic memoir about her father, who had died.  But her memoir about her mother, who's still hanging around this planet, just made me squirm.  I could not stop thinking of what it must be like for Mrs. Bechdel to go grocery shopping and run into acquaintances who had seen her portrayed to the world by her daughter, warts and all.

The only play I have written that was memoir -- i.e. explicitly and strictly based on my actual life rather than a dramatization inspired by my life -- was BAUM FOR PEACE, about my campaign for U.S. Congress.  I invented/imagined nothing in that play.  I didnt have to.  In my other plays, although in no way feeling confined to the facts, I have felt some moral obligation to be fair to the people who inspired my characters.

 In general, I try to be very scrupulous in making the character based on ME at least as awful/ridiculous as the character based on the other person.  This can lead to the dilemma that I created in TWO FOOLS or LOVE CONQUERS ALL -- NOT (1996)!

Poster for Original Production

TWO FOOLS is based on my relationship with a Costa Rican woman I was deeply in love with.  I made Luna (my Costa Rican love) so absolutely wonderful and Gracie (myself) so conflicted and neurotic that everyone in the audience sided with LUNA against GRACIE  whenever the two characters disagreed!  Didn't they realize that the whole point of the play was that BOTH characters were right and both characters were wrong???!!???  Didn't they notice that Gracie, who was a writer, was obviously based on the person who wrote the very play they were watching and CREATED the lovable character of Luna and the quirky character of Gracie and was therefore someone of great consciousness and honesty???!!!  No, they did NOT!  They thought Gracie was a pain in the ass, and Luna was oh so wonderful and sexy.

Maybe I was a pain in the ass in real life.  From the beginning, I knew that I was going to write a play about Diana and me.  That is not a very healthy approach to a relationship.  I knew I was twisted.  I didn't care!   We were so dramatic together!  It was so intense and interesting!  The two cultures clashing!  The great love!  Oy vey, how could I resist writing down every fascinating thing she (or I) said, at the expense of actually working on building a good relationship?

Oh well.  I got a really good play out of it.

The Fool Being Seduced by Evil Coatrack

Sometimes, despite my principles, when I'm transforming my life into (I hope) art, revenge rises to the the top of my motivations.   ONE FOOL, or HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING & LOVE THE DUTCH (1988)  is based on my experiences when I moved to Amsterdam for love the first time in 1985.  The woman who inspired me to move 6000 miles became a coatrack who was great in bed but selfish and cold.   I absolutely REJOICED in the possibility of her friends seeing the play.   A few years later, I ran into First Dutch Love on the street and we had coffee together.  She said reproachfully, "I heard you made me into an evil coatrack."  I replied, without a smidgeon of apology,  "You bet I did!"


Which brings me to PODIATRIST and my mother.  My MOTHER!  The one who kept me from starving to death and wallowing in shit when I was extremely young!  I don't remember this, although I am certain that it happened.  That saint, that nurturing force who,  when I had a very bad asthma attack, lovingly bathed me as I lay in the tub.  THAT I remember because I was an adult when it happened.  HOW CAN I POSSIBLY MAKE FUN OF HER?!

Original Mom Puppet by Mary Wings made for short workshop version
 performed at the 2000 Women on the Way (WOW) Festival in San Francisco.  

Thus, when my mother asked me in 2002, "That play you're writing about when Daddy was in the coma, how's it going?"  -- I replied, "Mom, I've decided to drop it.  I don't feel good about the character based on you.  I have to exaggerate what she says to make it funny, and I feel like I'm betraying you."   Of course, most of what the mother says in the play is not exaggerated at all.  So I was lying.  My mother really did say, without any irony, "Other people live for their parents' approval.  Why not you?"

Mom replied, "I don't care what the mother character is like, as long as I don't have to see the play."  She wasn't exactly giving the project her blessing -- but it was close enough for me!  So Mom became an opinionated, sarcastic, puppet who was really pissed off that her daughter was a lesbian.

On opening night in 2003, I arrived at the theater and there was a huge bouquet waiting for me.  Of COURSE  it was for me.  It was a goddam solo play!  But no, my mother had sent the flowers to the Mother PUPPET!

CURRENT MOM PUPPET BY MARI KAESTLE.  
THIS IS THE PUPPET  WHO RECEIVED FLOWERS FROM ACTUAL MOM.

AND at every performance, the Mother puppet got more applause than me!  I know, I know, the mother puppet was my left hand.  I SHOULD have felt the applause was for ME.  But I DIDN'T, and neither did the audience! Dammit, I was jealous.

What can I say?  One suffers for great art.

Mom died in 2011, and I wondered if I ever would feel okay about reviving PODIATRIST.  Mom could no longer give me permission or send flowers.  You're supposed to speak well of the dead.  The PODIATRIST Mom is a great, funny character.  But I would have to say the play speaks both well and ill of her.

But the play does SPEAK of her.  My mother lives in some fashion as long as I'm playing PODIATRIST.  And she continues to get more applause than ME, dammit!

And I have continued to think about her, as I've rehearsed and performed.  I've added a new scene where Mom tells Alexandra (me) that she's a good daughter.  My mother never said those words to me, although I was a damn good daughter.  At first, writing those words and having my left hand speak them was very disturbing to me.  It only reminded me that I had never heard them from Mom's lips.   But now I look forward to that scene.  There's something healing in hearing those words from the puppet during every run-thru and performance.

Also, I remembered the time when my sister Nancy was very ill, in 2009.  Mom's mobility was way too limited for travel.  So there was no possibility of her supplying a mother's physical comfort to her dying daughter, as Mom did when she bathed me all those years ago.  My mother said to me on the phone, "The fact that I know you're there for Nancy makes it much easier for me that I can't be there."  At the time, I couldn't really take it in.  But my mother was saying she trusted me to take care of her precious child.  I never really valued that beautiful statement until now.



I don't think I've ever experienced performing as a healing journey.  But AWAITING THE PODIATRIST is just that.

WORKING ON A NEW/OLD PLAY

I'm reviving my play, Waiting for the Podiatrist (2003), for the San Francisco Fringe Festival, opening September 9.  There are many changes:

1.  The title is now Awaiting the Podiatrist.  Although I hated to let go of the witty reference to Beckett's famous play, I could not BEAR being at the end of the alphabet!  You know about the San Francisco Chronicle's alphabetical listings?  Well, sometimes you have to turn the page to get to the W's, and you don't because the last listing on the page you're reading begins with a V, and you just ASSUME -- YOU ASSUME -- that there are no more listings and you just don't turn the page!  And you never find out that the fucking Little Man in the Chair is clapping for Waiting for the Podiatrist! 

Do you know how hard it is for a small grass-roots production to receive a fucking Little Man Clapping from the Critic on High????  No, you don't, do you?  It's very very hard, and hardly anyone saw it because THEY DIDN'T BOTHER TO TURN THE PAGE!

Well.  I didn't realize I would get so exasperated writing this blog.  Perhaps YOU, dear reader, are one of the enlightened who ALWAYS turns the page.  If so, my fervent gratitude and apologies.  

So I sacrificed a brilliant, sly title to alphabetical order.  That's what comes from being a mature artist who wants more attention.  

2.  Podiatrist is no longer two acts that run 110 minutes.  It's one act in 60 minutes. 

In 2003, Act One was about Mom and Alex (who represents me) struggling with the decision on whether to pull the plug on comatose Dad.   And Act Two dealt with Dad's recovery, and Alex convincing Dad that he needed to eat so he had strength for rehabilitation.  

Podiatrist 2003 was kind of a family play, albeit with puppets for parents.  In Act Two, the parents bickered and reminisced, the father wished for death because he didn't want to be a burden to his wife and child, the daughter tried to get her father to eat some chicken Parmesan.  Dad was really the main character of Podiatrist 2003.  

2003 ending:  Dad takes a bite of food (not so easy to do with a puppet -- where does the food end up?).  
2016 ending:  Dad comes out of his coma.  No rehab, no chicken Parmesan, no marital bickering.  

Yes, I do look like my father.  People have told me
that since I was seven years old. 

My father worked very hard his whole life -- six days a week at his own advertising agency until he was 78.  Born poor, he had been the Golden Boy.  Always a success.  He had never had to overcome obstacles.  When he was 83 and in a coma, we all agreed that he would not be interested in the frustrations of rehab.  And when he recovered enough to speak his mind, he told us exactly the same thing and refused to eat.  I thought he was slowly dying.  I didn't know whether to honor his desire to exit this mortal coil or to cajole him to finish his dinner.   I'll never forget when the chaplain, a rabbi, came out of my dad's room after talking to him.  He  said, "I don't see a dying man.  I see an unhappy man." "Well," I thought, "if anyone knows what dying looks like, it's a hospital chaplain.  So Dad's got to face Life!  with a capital 'L'"!  

Podiatrist 2003 was about facing death when you don't want to, and facing life when you don't want to.   

Podiatrist 2016 is a mother/daughter play, very focused on the two of them wrestling with the decision of taking Dad off the ventilator.   This dilemma resonates very differently for me now, because we actually DID take my younger sister Nancy off a ventilator in 2009, so that she could die.   Nancy's husband, George, was the one with the legal power.  Her daughter Rose and I fully supported him.  

Afterwards, I was flooded with feelings of guilt, which I eventually worked through with the help of others.  But now I'm back there again, wondering what Nancy would have wanted, if we did the right thing.  The pushy, determined Alex from the 2003 play seems awfully cold-blooded and self-interested to me now.  And yet, I certainly don't want to write a play that says you should keep comatose loved ones on ventilators indefinitely!

Maybe Podiatrist 2016 is about the impossibility of knowing what is the right decision in extreme circumstances.     

3.  The biggest change since 2003 is that the members of my immediate family -- mother, father and younger sister -- were all alive then.  And now they're gone.  Working on the play reminds me of that, and I miss them.  I feel lonely.  

Not that my family was perfect.  Well, look at this photo.   Nancy WAS the perfect sister. Or I could say we had a perfect relationship -- very loving and honest.  










Which person in this photo is most alive, most joyful, most open?  Nancy lived the last year and a half of her life with such grace.  I was lucky to be her companion on that journey.

Nancy isn't a character in PODIATRIST  because it made dramatic sense for the Daughter to be an only child.  But she shared fully in all the experiences the play is based on, so I felt dishonest for erasing her.  In 2003, I dedicated the play to her, to make amends for her erasure, and to tell the audience about her.  I'm going to dedicate the play to her again.

NEXT BLOG:  THE CHARACTER OF MOM AND THE REALITY OF MY MOTHER:  EXACTLY THE SAME AND TOTALLY DIFFERENT!

SAN FRANCISCO WEEPS FOR ORLANDO

Somehow I couldn't feel anything about Orlando.  I think if it had been three people killed, I would have been shocked and upset.  But the number ... 

I just didn't want to believe it.  It's human nature, I think, when something terrible happens, for our little brains to get busy figuring out how it couldn't possibly happen to US.  But if I really took in the Orlando massacre, I a lesbian who often goes to public places and events focused on gay people -- I would feel VULNERABLE!  My little brain would have a very hard time figuring out how this could never happen to ME.  I don't WANT to feel VULNERABLE!  I'm an American!   I'm supposed to live forever in comfort and ease!  I am NOT LIKE the people that bad things happen to!

Of course I KNOW the world is full of people (even Americans) who have never had the privilege of deluding themselves that they are safe.  In my defense, I must say that I've been practicing Buddhism for a while in an effort to dismantle the walls I put up between myself and others.  

But still, I heard about Orlando, the wall went up, and I was numb.

Also, I happened to be alone.  Much easier to be numb when alone.  

Then, in the course of doing my errands yesterday in my neighborhood, I came upon the altar at 18th St. and Castro.  There are often memorials at the spot for gay men and lesbians who have died.  I am always moved to read about these people who were loved.  Small memorials.  This was different.

 I read the hand-written placards.

I absorbed the loving words chalked on the sidewalk.





I studied the photos of my dear brothers and sisters who had been murdered.





I remembered the night that Harvey Milk had been murdered.

And I wept.