Democracy Awakening is the latest book by the well-known American history professor and author, Heather Cox Richardson. Richardson has made a big name for herself of late by virtue of her online newsletter “Letters from an American” – the most popular site on the Substack site. I’ve been a subscriber for over six months and always look forward to Ms. Richardson’s cogent analyses of contemporary events in American politics. She always provides an accurate historical background for current events and is able to contextualize even the most convoluted political events of our time.

As this year’s presidential election season approached, I decided to take a deeper dive into Ms. Richardson’s world view by reading her latest book, a New York Times bestseller for many months. The previous work of history I’d read was Jon Meacham’s The Soul of America, published in the aftermath of the right-wing assault on Charlottesville in 2017. (My review is available on my blog entry of January 8, 2023). That book covered some of the same territory as Democracy Awakening, though Richardson’s focuses more attention on our more recent history.

Meacham’s main thesis was that “the soul of America” is embodied in our Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The realization of that bold assertion had periods of advancement and retrenchment in the course of American history. Meacham argues that the responsibility for continuing to advance this ethos of human equality lies with us as citizens. In dark periods like 2017-2020, it became even more essential for citizens to rise up to protect and defend the democracy that our founding fathers had initiated as a compelling idea.

Richardson begins her book with an epitaph from the great American poet, Walt Whitman:

“We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened.” Democratic Vistas, 1871

In her Foreword, she says: “America is at a crossroads. A country that once stood as the global symbol of democracy has been teetering on the brink of authoritarianism.” She announces her intention to explain how this has happened, and also to describe “how we can reclaim our democratic principles.”

Her book has three parts:  Part 1: Undermining Democracy, Part 2: The Authoritarian Experiment, and Part 3: Reclaiming America.

Undermining Democracy

Part 1 traces the origins of a “conservative” movement in the United States over the last century that laid the groundwork to the ascendancy of Donald Trump’s MAGA phenomenon. It began with a backlash to Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs and policies of the 1930’s, programs that helped lift millions of ordinary Americans from the throes of a prolonged economic depression.

Business interests in the U.S. had held strong political influence since the late 1800’s. Their heyday was the 1920’s when unfettered capitalism led to the 1929 stock market crash. FDR was from a wealthy family himself, but he saw that the business interests of his peers had been poison for the nation as a whole. His implementation of dozens of federal programs to help feed, house and employ indigent Americans took much of the sting out of the depression and made him a popular hero. Business interests recoiled at FDR as a traitor to their self-serving interests and began working behind the scenes to upend him politically. Many of them were friendly to the 1930’s fascist experiments occurring in Germany, Italy and Japan. It took the U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941 to finally quiet the loud fascist movements that had arisen here.

Emerging victorious from the war and with one of the only intact industrial infrastructures in the world, the U.S. prospered in the post-war era. Many of the federal programs instituted during the depression, like Social Security and strong union protections, were highly popular. During the war, FDR helped establish very high income taxes on the richest Americans. These high taxes (up to 70% on incomes over $1 million) were also popular and resulted in full government coffers to fund the many infrastructure investments of that era. Even Republican President Eisenhower approved the high tax rates for the wealthy.  The majority of Democrats and Republicans alike ascribed to what has become known as the “liberal consensus”.

The liberal consensus continued through most of the 1960’s and culminated in the “Great Society” anti-poverty programs implemented by President Lyndon Johnson. After that pinnacle, however, the forces of backlash and retrenchment re-established themselves. It began with the election of President Nixon in 1968 and continued through much of the 1970’s, except for the single term of President Jimmy Carter (1976-1980). President Ronald Reagan is the one who brought the forces of economic “conservatism” to the fore during his two terms (1981-1988). Reagan’s mantra was that government was the enemy of the rightful expansion of business interests. His administration significantly lowered income and corporate taxes for the richest Americans while cutting back on the programs that created a “safety net” for ordinary citizens. Reagan established a “new normal” for American public policy in which business interests were given priority over the needs of ordinary people. The “Reagan Revolution” went mostly unchecked into the 21^st century, including during the two terms of the neo-liberal Democratic President Bill Clinton (1992-2000).

The undermining of the liberal consensus occurred as much for “cultural” as for political reasons. The success of the 1960’s civil rights movement led to a racial backlash epitomized in the rise of George Wallace as a presidential candidate. Similarly, the vociferous, student-led movements against the Vietnam War resulted in many people of the World War Two generation to turn against the values of the 1960’s “counterculture”. Even though many labor union protections were being eviscerated, many working people voted against their interest in favor of the white, “patriotic” voices of men like Nixon and Reagen. And a rising tide of politically directed fundamentalist Christians more and more gravitated to the “family values” that the Republican party exploited.

Richardson does a good job of demonstrating that MAGA did not begin with Donald Trump. In fact, “Make America Great Again” was Ronald Reagan’s campaign slogan forty years earlier. After the surprising Presidential victories of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Republicans formed a “Tea Party” movement to prevent the return of any semblance of the liberal consensus embodied in programs like Obama’s modest reforms in his Affordable Health Care Act. Meanwhile, Republican leaders in Congress refused to support a single Obama initiative and succeeded in blocking Obama’s second named justice to the Supreme Court. The stage was set for a giant step away from democracy as we know it.

The Authoritarian Experiment

The second section of the book documents a painful litany of undemocratic political and economic retrenchments engineered by Donald Trump and his lackeys during his term as President, 2017-2020. It begins with a brilliant chapter that documents Trump’s political rise from business mogul to reality TV star to an overbearing and boorish presidential candidate who reduced his Republican rivals to impotence. It also describes how some major mishaps in Hillary Clinton’s campaign, including James Comey’s infamous breach of established FBI practice in mistakenly resurrecting Clinton’s email lapses, led to Trump’s victory.

Richardson calls Trump’s presidential victory a “shocking event” in the eyes of many Republicans as well as the millions of Democrats living in their “blue bubble”. Former Republican president George W. Bush expressed his surprise and his dismay by saying: “that was some weird shit!”

Trump failed to support the traditional Republican oligarchy, instead jumping into full-scale authoritarianism. Richardson calls on significant scholarship about the fascists’ rise to power in Germany and Italy to help explain how Trump got away with it all. One of fascism’s first principles is that of “the big lie”. It rests on the principle that a blatant falsehood repeated loudly and often enough will soon be accepted. Trump’s first big lie had to do with the size of the crowd at his inauguration. He could not stomach the reality that attendance at a spontaneous “women’s march” in Washington the following week would far exceed the crowd at his inauguration. So he lied, and forced his subordinates to lie. That would set the pattern for the next four years.

Another key ingredient to Trump’s use of propaganda was his insistence on “alternative facts”. This term was used by Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway as a justification for Trump’s refusal to accept reality as reported in established media.

Other classic fascist techniques used by Trump included “gaslighting” and blackmail. In gaslighting, a perpetrator overwhelms his victim by loudly asserting offensive falsehoods loudly and repeatedly until the victim is too worn down to fight back.  Trump aide Steve Bannon described it as “flooding the zone with shit” so that the public feels unable to make sense of the world. Trump used blackmail by first enticing his associates to do something slightly illegal, and then threatening them with exposure if they refused to do something much more egregious. Richardson observes that one of Trump’s most important advisers in his early career was Roy Cohn, the same person who advised Sen. Joe McCarthy in his use of propaganda during his decades of bogus “communist” witch-hunts.

Trump’s authoritarian nature also dominated his actions. One of his first official acts was to order a travel ban on visitors from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. This so-called Muslim travel ban provoked an immediate response from his opponents, who flooded major airports with their demonstrations. Trump had to fire a Justice Department official who recognized the illegality of the ban. But eventually the ban was overruled in court.

By all reports, Trump didn’t take the daily work of President seriously, ignoring daily intelligence reports, and spending many hours each day watching Fox News. When the Covid pandemic occurred, his administration was caught completely flatfooted, despite well laid contingency plans for pandemics that the Obama administration had readied. Trump was ambivalent at best about masking and school closures and the U.S. suffered one of the highest rates of contagion in the world. The economy tanked and Trump’s response was to allow businesses and schools to reopen far earlier than his public health advisors specified.

Trump was impeached twice by the House of Representatives during his term of office. In addition, the Mueller investigation revealed that Trump and his aides had substantial contacts with Russian operatives who were actively maligning Hillary Clinton’s campaign. His Attorney General William Barr whitewashed the many egregious Russian connections made by Trump and his campaign officials, even though many of those officials were eventually tried and convicted.

In 2019, a story broke about a government informer’s claim that Trump had tried to bully the Ukrainian president into initiating a bogus case against Trump’s feared presidential rival, Joe Biden. The story was well documented, and a number of high-level State Department officials testified as to the illegality of Trump’s phone call, and its troublesome implications. The House of Representatives voted for impeachment but Trump’s Republican cronies in the Senate failed to convict him, and Trump emerged from the impeachment more intent than ever on punishing his political opponents.

The most egregious crime of Trump’s presidency was his refusal to accept the results of the presidential election of 2020 in which he lost his race against Joe Biden in both the popular and the Electoral College vote. He made completely unfounded accusations that the election had been rigged against him. When over 60 court cases resulted in no evidence of an unfair election, Trump devolved into an illegal scheme to have his VP, Mike Pence, sidestep the normal procedures for certifying the election and instead throw the result into the hands of the House of Representatives. To aid his scheme, he invited thousands of his most avid, right-wing followers to assault the U.S. Capitol while both houses of Congress were convening to certify the election.

This brazen affront to American democracy was on another level – that of unadulterated treason. At his second impeachment after the January 6 debacle, his friends in the Senate, led by a duplicitous Mitch McConnell, again refused to approve the articles of impeachment that the House of Representatives had again pursued.

Once again, Trump had perpetrated a frontal attack on American democracy by using a “Big Lie”. He had so bamboozled his millions of followers that many of them believed this outrageous lie was true. In this way, his authoritarian threat to U.S. democracy remained alive.

Reclaiming America

In the last section, Richardson steps back to take a more macro look at what the American experiment is all about. Going back to our nation’s origins, she too, like Jon Meacham, singles out our Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are created equal” as our country’s most salient theme. She sees the U.S. Constitution as a flawed attempt to provide a governmental framework to further the underlying goal of achieving true equality for all.

The United States was a long way from true equality at its inception. Certainly, women and people of color, most of them enslaved, continued to be regarded as unworthy of full citizenship. In addition, most of the states required that voting be limited to male property owners. The compromises made in the Constitution to assuage southern slaveholders resulted in a political system that perpetuated gross inequalities that pervaded through to the Civil War and beyond. And yet, the impetus towards universal equality remained alive in the hearts and minds of many Americans throughout our history. This movement was carried on mostly by those who had yet to achieve the promised dream of democratic equality – women, people of color, and ongoing waves of immigrant people.

Even the authoritarian movement that Trump leads makes use of strong democratic urges for economic equality that is part of the American dream. The fact is that well-off oligarchies in both major political parties have pushed a “globalist” economy that mostly benefits their own wealth and well being, at the expense of the laboring people who built the country.

Richardson does a good job at showing how Trump and his MAGA movement have co-opted the legitimate economic grievances of working people and created a twisted populism that perverts those legitimate grievances in service to the well-being of Trump and the super-rich.

Like Jon Meacham before her, Richardson sees patterns of success and failure in the democratic experiment that is our nation’s history. Both historians remind us that even in our darkest hours, the seeds of regeneration are present. And that even in times of seemingly unlimited success, as in the halcyon decades after World War II, undemocratic elements based on wealth, racism and sexism remained ready to pounce.

Richardson shows in detail how the deep vulnerabilities of our present social and economic realities mirror those of the 1930’s, when strong fascist movements emerged. The United States could easily have veered to fascist authoritarianism at that time. Similarly, the seeds of authoritarianism have been sprouting all around us for decades now in the likes of Nixon, Reagan and Trump. These significant threats to our democracy can only be met and overcome when a substantial number of our people awaken to the danger. This awakening is propelled by remembering the long history of democratic movements that have arisen when we’ve been on this brink before.

To conclude, I’d like to share the inspiring words of still another important American historian, Howard Zinn:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives.

“If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.

“If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

“And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

(from You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times, 2018)

John Bayerl, 8/9/2024

I recently finished reading a small book of essays by the renowned psychiatrist and author, Viktor Frankl. It’s called Yes to Life In Spite of Everything and contains three essays by Frankl that were written just months after his release from three years in Nazi concentration camps.

Frankl is best known for his internationally best-selling memoir about his time in the camps, Man’s Search for Meaning. I initially read that book in high school, and it had a strong effect on me. I was amazed and inspired that someone could live through the inhuman conditions perpetrated by the Nazis and still have a positive view of life. I’ve re-read the book three or four times since my youth, and each reading has succeeded in reinspiring me.

Yes to Life contains Frankl’s early essays that were published in English for the first time in 2020, brilliantly introduced by Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and chief spokesperson for the therapeutic movement that book inspired. In his Introduction, Goleman expresses his deep concern about the  current wave of doubt and pessimism being experienced by millions of young people in the face of seemingly unsolvable, catastrophic world problems like climate change, large-scale technological warfare (including the possibility of nuclear war), a resurgence of political authoritarianism, and unconscionable economic inequality brought on by unfettered capitalism. How does a person find meaning in the face of these staggering challenges?

Frankl’s approach to finding meaning is rooted in the very nature of human awareness. As a practicing psychiatrist in pre-war Vienna, Frankl subscribed to Sigmund Freud’s exposition of two principal sources of meaning: work and love.  In finding creative work in our lives, paid or unpaid, a person engages in an enterprise that is greater than the individual ego, and which gives satisfaction and fulfillment in its own terms. Learning how to love and be loved is the other main source of meaning that the Viennese school of psychiatry espoused. Loving another person requires a transcending of our own self-interest in our regard for, and wishing the best for, our beloved.

But early on, Frankl added another realization as to what gives life meaning. Even in the absence of creative work and loving relationships, Frankl maintained that a human being always has the possibility of finding meaning in the simple, existential freedom of choosing how to relate to outside circumstances.

Frankl’s early work on what became known as “logotherapy” was fully tested by his own challenges in surviving the camps. There he was forced to evaluate his hypothesis on a daily basis. Although he was radically brought down from his highly regarded professional status, although he was cruelly separated from his pregnant wife and aging parents, Frankl still found ways to choose meaning by remembering his freedom, in every moment, to choose his own reaction to the direst of circumstances. Man’s Search for Meaning documents the daily horrors and dehumanizing forces in the camps, as well as Frankl’s ability to keep hope alive. He did this over and over by remembering his always available potential for choosing how he responded to outward circumstances.

The three essays in Yes To life provide the theoretical underpinnings of logotherapy in straightforward language that a layperson can easily understand. Reading it has reminded me of an always available way to approach challenges to my own mental health. It’s helping me to face the same existential challenges that young people are having with the current environmental mess that their elders have created.

I’m grateful for the freedom that retirement allows me, but I’m also invested in how humanity can move forward to meet the enormous challenges facing us on planet Earth right now. Part of my “skin in the game” comes via my love and concern for our children and grandchildren. I know that when I become pessimistic in my attitude, what I have to offer my family and the world decreases in strength and effectiveness. I’m blessed in my daily life to have self-chosen, creative work projects and a happy marriage. When those blessings aren’t enough to sustain me, Frankl’s logotherapy has become my “goto” fallback. I remind myself that I can choose my attitude in response to whatever challenges life throws me.

I’ve suffered with depression for some periods in my life, and one thought has usually helped me (along with therapy and meditation) to find a way out. I think of Viktor Frankl in those horrible concentration camps for three years and how he kept “saying yes to life in spite of everything”. He was able to do this by affirming a fundamental existential truth of human awareness: the ever-present freedom to choose our attitude. If Viktor Frankl could find meaning there, then what’s my excuse?

John Bayerl, 6/24/2024

Foreword

“Anything Is Possible” is a masterful collection of inter-related short stories by the acclaimed American novelist Elizabeth Strout.  I first encountered Ms. Strout’s work when I picked up a copy of her latest novel, “Lucy by the Sea”, at our public library two years ago. I was completely taken by that relatively short, trenchant novel about an aging writer and her ex-husband as they navigate the first year of the Covid pandemic together in a secluded, seaside cottage in rural Maine.

Intrigued by the character of Lucy Barton, I read another of Ms. Strout’s series of novels about this character. “My Name Is Lucy Barton” is a novel framed as Lucy’s memoir after she has made it big in the publishing world. It traverses the story of her childhood emotional abuse and impoverishment, and her lifelong struggle to declare herself as a fully human woman who can claim her name and her background on her own terms.

When I recently came upon Strout’s 2017 collection of short stories in the Large Print section of the library, I quickly grabbed it up. It turns out that the nine stories of “Anything Is Possible” are each about various characters in Lucy Barton’s early life and how their lives are unfolding. The stories are set against the background of the publication of “My Name Is Lucy Barton” and each of them reflects in some way on the successful writing career of a “native daughter” who had been scorned and isolated because of her family’s poverty and isolation.

When I was an undergraduate English major long ago, I developed a deep appreciation and love for the short story genre. Classic short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, and others, were a mainstay in my literary diet. Reading the poignant, finely crafted short narratives of Ms. Strout has reawakened my love for this genre.

To help me remember each of the stories in “Anything Is Possible” I took some time to write a synopsis of each. I was so taken with the stories that I read them all a second time and revised my synopses. I felt to share these on my blog for anyone who might be interested. I fully realize that these synopses are pale shadows of Ms. Strout’s vibrant, nuanced prose. I heartily recommend reading the full-length originals to garner the full scope and depth of her writing.

1.“The Sign”

The first story is about Tommy Guptill and his remarkable encounter with Lucy Barton’s brother, Peter. Tommy and his wife Shirley are in their early 80’s, enjoying their retirement in a humble rural home near Lucy’s fictional hometown, Amgash, IL.

On a beautiful May morning, Tommy drives into the more prosperous town of Carlisle to buy birthday presents for his wife. He stops at the bookstore there and buys a gardening book for her, and notices Lucy Barton’s memoir, “My Name Is Lucy Barton” there. He fondly remembers Lucy from her years in the Amgash school where Tommy had worked as the janitor.

Tommy’s backstory is that he had been a successful dairy farmer, happily married with three well-adjusted kids, until an electrical fire burned down his barns and home. He was 35 years old at the time, stunned by this sudden reversal of fortune. In the midst of his terror, he feels a warm, reassuring presence that communicates the message that “all will be well”. Tommy is in awe at this unbidden manifestation of God, and is able to reconstitute a happy, productive life. He is content with his ensuing career as a janitor at the impoverished town’s only school, becoming a steady and positive presence to everyone he encounters there, teachers and students alike.

As Tommy is driving back home, he makes an unplanned stop at the dilapidated rural home of the Barton family, inhabited now only by Lucy’s older brother, Peter. Peter is a reclusive man in his 60’s whose main human contact is a weekly phone call from Lucy. Tommy had witnessed the three Barton children suffer isolation and derision at the Amgash school owing to their extreme poverty and their parents’ antisocial behavior. After seeing Lucy’s book, Tommy feels humanly called to look in on his reclusive neighbor.

Peter is initially suspicious of Tommy’s visit. After exchanging pleasantries, Peter asks that Tommy not visit again since it just makes him feel guilty. Tommy is incredulous, so Peter explains.

Peter believes that it was his own Father who had set the fire on Tommy’s property some 50 years ago. His Father had worked for Tommy for a while, but then stopped. Peter assumed that he had been let go and then set the fire as vengeance. Peter assumes that Tommy knows this and that his occasional visits are his own form of revenge in provoking Peter’s guilty feelings.

Tommy is stunned by Peter’s story. Tommy believes that it was his own negligence with his milking machines that had ignited the fire. While he understands the plausibility of Peter’s story, he has long ago come to peace with that tragedy. He assures Peter that he bears no grudge against him.

Peter adamantly defends his Father as a good and decent person who was “twisted” by the traumas he experienced during World War Two. Tommy shares how his own brother came back from that war, a much-diminished person who was eventually abandoned by his wife and children. He tries to comfort and reassure Peter, who eventually is able to accept Tommy’s positive intentions.

As Tommy is about to leave, Peter asks that he drive him down to the road where his long-deceased Mother’s business sign still stands: “SEWING AND ALTERATIONS.” Peter brings an axe with him and proceeds to vehemently destroy the wooden sign. Tommy looks on, aghast. He has the realization that it was the Mother who was the central force of abuse within the Barton family. Before Tommy drives away, he tells Peter that he will continue to look in on him, and Peter agrees to it, thanking Tommy.

Tommy is emotionally shaken by what he has witnessed. The rock-solid belief in a compassionate God that has sustained him since the fire has now begun to crack.

When he arrives home, his loving wife is sitting out front waiting for him. She sees her husband’s distress and asks him what has happened. Tommy shares what Peter has told him. He also shares with Shirley for the first time about the compassionate presence that had visited him during the fire. Now Tommy doubts that his experience was real. Shirley lovingly embraces Tommy and says that his experience was real, that nothing Peter shared invalidates it.

Tommy is able to receive his wife’s comfort and support. “You might be right” he says. And then adds “I love you.” It’s clear that the real love between Tommy and Shirley will get them through this crisis of faith.

2. “Windmills”

This story is about Patty Nicely, a high school guidance counselor, a widow in her 40’s, who has to reorient herself after a disastrous meeting with one of her students. Patty takes anti-depressant medication to help her deal with her grief at losing a loving husband. She has gained a lot of weight as a result. Patty is also the main caregiver for her elderly mother, who has lived apart from her family since having a brief affair when her three girls were teenagers.

A key factor in Patty’s reorientation is her chance encounter with the book “My Name Is Lucy Barton”. Patty knew of Lucy Barton from some minor childhood connections. Reading the book is a striking revelation to Patty of how a person growing up in abject poverty and emotional abuse could go on to become a highly successful author.

Patty’s first encounter with Lucy Barton’s 15-year-old niece in her guidance counselor office is quite upsetting to Patty. The girl is sullen and verbally abusive to her, insulting her as “Fat Patty” and as a woman who is rumored to never have had sex. Patty is deeply offended and embarrassed by this and calls the girl “a piece of filth.”

Patty is appalled by her own behavior. She calls her sister Linda (the main character in “Cracked”) for support, but Linda only affirms that the girl IS a piece of filth, and that Patty should have nothing to do with her.

In the course of a weekend, Patty has encounters with her mother, her younger friend, Angelina, and with a married man she has a strong emotional attraction to, Charlie Macauley. She is also reading the Lucy Barton “memoir” and is being deeply affected by it. Driving home from her visit with Angelina, Patty has a fundamental realization that she can overcome her own sense of shame and insufficiency, just like Lucy Barton did.

Patty has a second meeting with Lucy Barton’s young niece and sincerely apologizes to her for her behavior. The girl is taken aback by this. When Patty goes on to encourage the girl, saying she will help her go to college, the girl becomes very emotional, as she is not used to receiving such positive attention.

This dramatic turnaround in Patty’s belief in herself and her determination to do right by her poverty-stricken student is a testament to the power of literature to transform lives. In the end, Patty is even able to establish a positive, mutual connection with Charles Macauly.

The title “Windmills” derives from Patty’s appreciation of the hundreds of wind turbines in the rural areas surrounding her town. She is intrigued by how all the windmill arms seem to turn at different speeds, but that sometimes, some of them fall into a similar pattern. She takes this as an affirmation that sometimes people can relate with one another in harmony.

3. “Cracked”

Linda Peterson-Cornell is one of the three Nicely sisters, a sister of Patty in the previous story, whose family was disrupted when their mother left to have an affair and their father refused to accept his penitent wife back. The sisters reluctantly sided with their father, but all of them felt rejected by their mother’s affair. Their father has a successful business, and the sisters all go to college.

Linda had a one-year marriage after college but then had a longer marriage to a very wealthy man. Now, she feels like she would like her rich husband to “disappear” but is trapped by the luxurious home and lifestyle that he provides. Her husband Jay has a sexual fetish that includes voyeuristic observation of female houseguests. Linda plays along with Jay’s perversion, even reluctantly joining him in his voyeurism.

The story involves two other women, professional photographers, who are leading workshops in the local photography festival. Karen is the director of the festival and has brought in her friend Yvonne to assist. Yvonne is staying as a guest in the home of Linda and Jay.

Yvonne is put off by her accommodations, an ostensibly well-appointed private apartment downstairs, which has no doors. She is unaware of the hidden video cameras there that Jay uses to observe her. Yvonne stays for three nights, keeping her distance from her hosts.

On the third night, after coyly coming on to her, Jay assaults Yvonne sexually and she flees the house, terrified, with only panties and a tee shirt on. She tells her story to the police, who appear at Jay and Linda’s home to arrest Jay in the middle of the night.

Linda is in an emotional fog as all of this transpires. Jay has the town’s best lawyer and is intent on denying any wrongdoing. Linda is complicit with this yet shaken by it as well.

She runs into Karen in a convenience store the next day. Karen initially confronts Linda about her apparent complicity in the assault of Yvonne. Linda denies it, saying she knows nothing about the accusations against her husband.

Karen has recently experienced the unexpected suicide of her own husband. She realizes the duplicity of her assumption that Linda was complicit, when Karen herself was so in the dark about her own husband’s unhappiness. She apologizes to Linda.

Unjustifiably forgiven, Linda then has a bleak vision of her future life with Jay in which she continues to be complicit in his perversions. She feels utterly hopeless and empty with this fate. She recognizes the same sense of betrayal and loss she experienced when her mother left home to have her affair.

The title “Cracked” comes from a recurrent theme in Karen’s recent photographs, which all include cracked glass and other objects, as if from an earthquake. They are an out-picturing of Karen’s own shattered life after her husband’s suicide, as well as Linda’s perception of her “cracked” life.

4. “The Hit-Thumb Theory”

This is a story about Charlie Macaulay, a middle-aged veteran of the U.S. war in Vietnam. He is emotionally scarred from the combat horror he experienced, carrying a sense of guilt and repressed rage rather than any overt PTSD.

He is in a cheap hotel outside Peoria, IL, awaiting the arrival of a prostitute he has been visiting for some time. He has developed a real, human fondness for her, but feels guilt about the deceit his actions have introduced into his longtime marriage with his college sweetheart.

When “Tracey” arrives, he can tell that something is amiss with her. She had previously acknowledged her own feelings for Charlie and had refused to accept payment. But this time, she is distraught and asks for $10,000 to save her son from a drug deal gone bad. She says that her son’s life is threatened.

Their tryst is interrupted by a desperate phone call from Charlie’s wife. Charlie had been reflecting with warmth on the early days of their courtship while in college. Charlie recalls his wife’s innocence and zest for life. Now he confronts her pathetic neediness and his inability to take her seriously as a person.

Charlie desperately decides to get Tracey’s requested money, knowing it means the end of his relationship with Tracey, and also with his wife. He drives to a branch of his wife’s bank and withdraws the $10,000 for Tracey. Feeling unable to return home after such a heinous violation of his marriage, he checks into “Dottie’s BnB” for the night.

There he awaits the inevitable cascade of guilt for his action. As a boy, he had learned that the real pain of physical injury occurred some minutes after the trauma itself. This is the “hit-thumb” theory that he now realizes applies to emotional trauma as well. Checking into Dottie’s, he connects with Dottie on a human level. When he comes down to watch TV in the guest parlor, Dottie joins him, sensing that her guest is going through hard times. Charlie breaks down in tears as the emotional weight of the day comes crashing down on him.

Dottie is able to compassionately witness his pain without being put off, nor being overly involved. Charlie deeply appreciates that his suffering has been witnessed in such a way. Few words are exchanged. But both Charlie and Dottie feel that a significant human, ennobling connection has been made.

Dottie is quick to communicate that she is not available for a romantic encounter, and Charlie is happy for that. He remembers having his tears witnessed by strangers at the Vietnam Veterans’ memorial in Washington and how he felt that his grief was respected by them. He feels the same about Dottie’s witnessing his current emotional pain.

His sense of utter darkness is mitigated by that connection, and he leaves the next morning with some small hope for the value of his life.

5. “Mississippi Mary”

This story is about an elderly American divorcee living in a seaside northern Italian town with her younger Italian husband, also divorced. They have been happily in love for about 15 years, ever since they met when Mary got lost from her American tour group there.

Mary had lovingly raised five daughters back in Illinois. She grew up in poverty in Mississippi but later married a successful businessman in Illinois. Her first husband had had a romantic relationship with his secretary for many years. Even after that relationship ended, Mary never felt much affection or appreciation from him. When she met a kind, considerate Italian man who expressed warm feelings for her, Mary returned his affection and decided to start a new life with him.

All but her youngest daughter, Angelina, had come to terms with their mother’s new life and had visited her in Italy. Angelina and Mary had a very deep emotional bond, and it took Angelina many years before deciding to visit. When she finally did visit, Mary was overjoyed. But Angelina still felt hurt for being abandoned and expressed this to Mary.

Mary understood her daughter’s pain and shared in it as well, but she also communicates to Angelina that her previous life felt like it had dried up, and she still wanted to live. On the night before Angelina leaves for home, she sees her mother from afar and notices how happy she seems, sitting in the small Italian town square listening to music. When a bent over old man has difficulty crossing the street, she watches her mother lovingly go to his assistance. The old man is very grateful, and they have a big hug.

Witnessing this, Angelina understands why her mother has decided to live in a country where people are so much warmer and more expressive. She leaves the next day with a sense of acceptance that her mother has found love and happiness in her old age.

6. “Sister”

Lucy Barton has planned for her first visit “home” since her father died 16 years earlier. She will be in Chicago on a book tour and will rent a car to drive the two hours to her Illinois hometown.

Her brother Peter, a barely functional recluse, still lives in the dilapidated family home. Her sister Vicki lives in a nearby town with her husband and teenage daughter. Peter is anxious to see Lucy, who has maintained regular phone contact with him over the years. Vicki resents Lucy’s “escape” from their impoverished family when she left for college and never returned. Vicki is not planning to see her sister, even though Lucy regularly sends money and letters to Vicki.

Peter spends two weeks trying to spruce up the dark, decrepit, filthy house he lives in. When Lucy arrives on a Sunday afternoon, he is uneasy about the house’s condition, even though he has worked hard to clean it, and even bought a new carpet. Lucy is happy to see her brother and soon puts him at ease. She praises him for his recent volunteer work as a cook at a homeless shelter (made possible by his neighbor, Tommy Gupthill and his wife).

Then Vicki shows up unexpectedly. She treats Lucy with disdain. Lucy does her best to normalize things, asking Vicki about her job in a nursing home. Vicki shares that her daughter is getting a college scholarship and Lucy is overjoyed, but Vicki is much less so.

Vicki starts telling horrible stories of their toxic childhood. Lucy has spent the better part of her adult life coming to terms with the deprivations of her family life. One of Vicki’s stories about their mother’s ruthless cruelty causes Lucy to convulse into a panic attack. Vicki thinks her sister has gone “cuckoo”, while Peter is beside himself.

Finally, Lucy asks Vicki and Peter to drive her back to Chicago, taking two cars so that they can return home. Peter drives Lucy’s rental car, following Lucy and Vicki in Vicki’s car. Peter struggles to follow them, driving on unfamiliar roads (he has never gone more than a few miles from home).

Finally, Lucy has them pull off the highway as they near Chicago, saying she feels ok to drive the rental car back herself. Vicki and Peter return home in her car. Vicki shares with Peter how flabbergasted she is at Lucy’s strange behavior.

7. “Dottie’s Bed & Breakfast”

Dottie is an aging woman (60’s) who operates a small BnB in a small town in Illinois. She is happily divorced, mostly content with her independence. She is the sister of Abel Blaine (story #9) and shared her childhood poverty with him.

Dorothy has a significant role in story #4, “The Hit-Thumb Theory”, in which she soulfully befriends an overnight guest who is suffering a crisis in his marriage. In this story, she similarly befriends a woman guest of about her own age, wife of a cardiologist, who is traveling with her husband for a conference.

When the woman returns bereft to the BnB in the middle of the afternoon, Dottie makes her tea and gives hours of her time listening to the woman’s story (which includes an important interlude about Annie Appleby of the next story.) Not once during her hours-long monologue does the woman take in Dottie.

When the woman’s husband returns, he is upset that she has been sharing her time with the humble proprietor. The next morning, the woman gives Dottie the cold shoulder, embarrassed that she has shared herself so fully with this lower-class stranger.

Dottie takes an acid dislike for the woman and her husband, being all too familiar with the kind of disdainful class judgments of their kind. She expresses her disdain for them by secretly spitting in their morning jam. She also confronts them both verbally, eliciting further demeaning judgments from her guests.

8. “Snow-Blind”

Annie Appleby is the youngest of three kids growing up on a potato farm in New England. She seeks and finds relief from the shame-driven emotional poverty of her family by spending much of her childhood exploring the woods abutting the farm. There she has magically mystic experiences of the natural world.

Her rich inner life opens her to deep feelings and the capacity to express them. She takes to acting in school plays and at age 16, is “discovered” by a traveling theater company which successfully recruits her to a life in the theater. She has a highly successful career in small regional theaters.

A crisis in her farm family brings her home. Her mostly loving father’s dementia has gone out of control. He has revealed himself as a lifelong homosexual who maintained an ongoing secret relationship with a local schoolteacher. Annie had cherished her father as her protector after a childhood walk with him through the snow-covered farm fields. (Annie appears as an “offstage” character in the previous story, “Dottie’s Bed & Breakfast”).

 9. “Gift”

Abel Blaine is the “successful” brother of Dorothy (of “Dottie’s Bed & Breakfast”) and a childhood cousin of Lucy Barton. Like Lucy, he found a way out of hopeless poverty, in his case by working hard and using his creative intelligence in business. As an aging executive of his thriving air-conditioning business, he is generous, soulful, and devoted to his children and grandchildren, but is caught in a marriage gone stale with a higher-class woman who holds disdain for his humble beginnings.

Attending a pre-Christmas performance of “A Christmas Carol” with his family, things start going awry when the lights mysteriously go out in the theater. On finally reaching home after a very long day, Abel has to return to the theater to retrieve his granddaughter’s beloved stuff animal. There he encounters the semi-deranged actor who played “Scrooge” in that evening’s performance.

“Scrooge” initially taunts Abel for his middle-class uptightness, but Abel engages him in a friendly way. Abel finds the stuffed animal and is trying to leave, but Scrooge keeps engaging him, now in a more friendly way himself. Abel starts feeling intense chest pain, reliving his heart attack the year before, one that almost killed him.

Scrooge is terrified at Abel’s collapse and calls 911. As Abel is taken to the hospital in an ambulance, he experiences a pervading sense of well-being. As he approaches his death, he embraces the gift of an all-encompassing peace and love that engulfs him. He thinks to himself that “anything is possible.

John Bayerl, 5/26/2024

I’ve had a lifelong love of riding bicycles and recently rekindled that ardor after purchasing a new eBike (electric bicycle).

I retired from my day-job in 2015 and one of the first things I did to mark the occasion was to purchase a new, modestly priced, hybrid-style, 24-gear, bicycle. I’ve never been a “serious” cyclist in that I’m not one to pedal long distances and have never joined a bicycle club. But since boyhood, I’ve retained a love for the pure physicality of riding a bike, and the sense of freedom it brings. In my retirement, I’ve come to really enjoy viewing the world around me from my bike – especially being able to slow down and take in the beauty of the natural world as well as the sumptuous landscape architecture in many of the suburbs of Montgomery County, Maryland, where I’ve lived for the last 30 years.

Like many of my fellow retirees, I had some challenges finding my life focus in the first six months of not having a formal job. Early on though, whenever I felt at sixes and sevens about what I was doing with my life, I found that if I just got on my new bike and set out, the sense of inner confusion and disarray soon evaporated. Cycling requires being present in the moment. It proved to be just the antidote I needed.

I started by just riding around my own and adjacent neighborhoods of Derwood – an unincorporated suburb between Rockville and Gaithersburg. I soon discovered that I could see my surroundings differently from the seat of a bike. Driving a car for me is mostly about getting from Point A to Point B. On my bike, I can slow down to take in people and things that catch my eye. And it gives more mobility than walking, allowing me to take in broader swaths of my environment. Like many iPhone users these days, I’ve become something of an amateur photographer. On a bicycle, it’s no problem to pull over and take a picture of things that attract my attention.

Over time, I became a bit more adventurous in my bike rides. There were two marvelous hiker-biker trails in close vicinity to my home. One was the Rock Creek Trail, which traverses some 25 miles from Lake Needwood (in Derwood) down through the Maryland suburbs and through Rock Creek Park in DC. The trail follows Rock Creek all the way down to the Potomac, and while I never made it that far down, I did make it to northern DC, finding numerous stunning vistas and secluded places along the creek, perfect for quiet intervals in the lap of Mother Earth.

One of my favorite half-day bike journeys was pedaling from my home down through the Rock Creek trail about ten miles to the Strathmore Music Center in North Bethesda. I loved the artistic landscaping of the grounds there, including a marvelous outdoor sculpture court, where I often stopped, walked, and found interesting places to sit and eat my sandwich lunch. I also became a fan of the art exhibitions within the beautiful galleries of the Strathmore Mansion. Often as not, I would get home by riding my bike to the nearby Grosvenor Metro Station and take the Metro back up to my home near the Shady Grove Metro stop.

Another favorite ride was on the more recently constructed hiker-biker trail that ran along the Inter-County Connector (ICC) highway from Derwood to Emory Lane. I sometimes rode this route with a neighbor of ours, Steve Crawford, another aging cyclist with about the same stamina as me. Steve and I had been friends for years, but our friendship noticeably deepened as we spent time together on our bikes, traversing trails and neighborhoods quiet enough to ride in tandem and talk. Steve had an untimely death from a heart ailment two years ago and I miss him dearly, especially when I’m out riding alone.

Two years ago, my wife Andrea and I moved to a marvelous new retirement complex in southwest Rockville. Part of the attraction of The Village At Rockville (TVAR) for me was its proximity to the city of Rockville’s many bike trails, and bicycle friendly roads.  Our facility even has a bicycle storage room within the parking garage.  Soon after moving here in March 2022, I was out exploring the new terrain on my bicycle. It was a great way to familiarize myself with our new geographical environment.

I have some persistent lower back and hip issues from degenerating spinal disks and arthritis. The discomfort was causing me to ride less often, and for shorter distances. Last October, I began to consider getting a new bicycle, one on which I could sit more upright. In the process of bicycle shopping online, I began noticing a wide variety of electrical bicycles that also had more upright seating configurations. So, I decided to try out an eBike and visited the Rockville Trek store. 

I encountered a very helpful young woman salesperson at the Trek store. She was an avid biker herself, riding 10 miles to work each day on her manual bicycle. When I told her about my back issues, she encouraged me to try out their eBike model. There was a large Metro parking lot down the street which she encouraged me to use for my initial spin. As soon as I started feeling the battery-assist power of the bike, I was sold. I had an exhilarating spin around that parking lot for a good long while before returning to the store. The Trek cost a bit more than I wanted to pay though and I decided to visit a couple more bike stores.

In the end, I purchased an Aventon 500.3 eBike from the modest “Good Vibes Bikes” store about 3 miles from home. I test rode that model as well and really liked everything about it –- upright seating, throttle-on-demand power, and reasonable price ($1.6K). The store had their own maintenance shop, and I got their one-year service plan.

After six months, I’m totally delighted with my new eBike.  My back issues had begun reducing the frequency of my rides to once every week or two. Throughout our mild Mid-Atlantic winter, I was able to ride two to three times per week, and for much longer distances than I’d been able to go on my manual bike. The 10-pound lithium-ion battery can get me up to 50 miles on a charge. Mostly though, I’m riding for about 10-15 miles at a time.

My new bike has 8 derailleur gears which I can peddle without electrical-assist as desired. But I seldom do that. The torque-sensor motor provides seamless power assist on hills and great speed (up to 20mph) on straightaways. It has four levels of power-assist, and has a thumb-activated throttle that can provide power without pedaling at all.

My new eBike has renewed my love affair with bicycles, allowing me to experience my environment with ease and comfort. A friend recently gave me his bike-rack for my car and I’m eagerly awaiting warmer weather when I can begin driving the bike down to the C&O Canal for longer rides along the Potomac. I’m very appreciative and grateful for this new technology that has given a new lease on bicycle-life for aging seniors like me.

John Bayerl, 4/16/2024

Our favorite beach in Puerto Rico is about a mile west of Isabela’s Villa Pesquera on the coast road. It’s about a ten minute drive from our current digs in the Isabela Beach Court (IBC), adjacent to the Villa.

The beach is named “Playa Poza de Teodoro” and marks the western point of the mile-wide Isabela bay. It features a formidable array of offshore rock and reef formations against which the fierce waters of the surging Atlantic crash headlong, creating periodic bursts of soaring ocean water. When the surf is up, the site can be very dramatic in sight and sound.

“Playa” simply means beach, and a “poza” is a pool of water created by an indentation. The offshore rock-reef formations are called “montones”. These form a barrier behind which the ocean water fills a calm, natural pool that is typically about 200 yards wide and about 50 yards from beach to montones.

When we arrived yesterday morning around 10am, the air temperature was 84F and the water temperature in the pool only a bit less. It was clear and sunny and the usual shore winds were noticeably diminished. It’s about a 200 yard walk from the makeshift sandy turnoff to the beach proper, ascending the large sand dunes on a designated path maintained by a local environmental group . We hauled our two beach chairs across the dunes until we finally got sight of our destination. 

We were surprised that the poza was smaller and shallower than we’d ever seen it in our 17 years of visiting here. It was low tide, and there was only an occasional small surge of water over the montones to replenish the pool. It was actually a pretty tranquil scene. Rather than sit out under the full tropical sun, we pitched our chairs under the shady branches of some nearby palm trees.

Andrea and I sat in silence for a while, taking in the natural beauty of sun, sand, sea, clouds and sky. We keep returning to this place because it inspires in us a deep sense of wonder and peace. As we age, the preciousness of life becomes more poignant, and this place brings those rich feelings to the fore.

We’ve come already stripped down for the beach and soon start off for a closer exploration. The sand was already getting hot to our feet, and it felt good to wade in the clear, cooler water of the pool. I’d brought my small binoculars and spent some time to continue taking in the panorama.

We then walked a short distance off to the west where we could see a group of surfers in the relatively small waves. This is one of the more popular surfing beaches on the Isabela coast and it’s always fun to watch the surfers, men and women, dexterousLy balancing on their boards. With my binoculars I also spotted a large, flat rocky promontory offshore where a large flock of gulls were resting. 

Returning to the poza, we retrieved our masks and snorkels for our first foray into the water. It was amazingly warm and we were both soon happily exploring the silent, underwater world where tropical fish abounded around the large rocks scattered around the pool. I always feel a sense of deep peace and appreciation when snorkeling in those shallow tropical waters. I can really relax into the calm, bounteous sea world in which I’m immersed.

In addition to brightly colored tropical fish, the pool also supports schools of silvery sardines. These attract hunting pelicans which occasionally circle around and plunge headfirst into the water to nab one. A pure white ibis patrolled the first level of reef in search of little crabs. Soon a pair of oyster catchers arrived on a similar mission.

The snorkeling was very relaxing in the clear calm of the warm shallow waters. I was able to release all my usual background anxiety and really let go in this richly bio-diverse environment. This feeling of loving immersion in the natural world is one that I’m learning to value and cultivate. A friend uses the term “biophilia” (love of living things) to describe this feeling, and I find it very apt.

We were first introduced to the magic of the Isabela coastline by our old friends Freeman and Joyce Allan. They had purchased a condo at the IBC in 2007 and invited us to visit. Andrea had been wanting a winter vacation after being told by her oncologist that her cancer history put her in a vulnerable statistical category. We had our first visit that year. The Allan’s showed us all their favorite beaches and restaurants in the area, and we were completely enamored, returning nearly every February since then.

The Allens referred to the Playa Poza de Teodoro simply as “the Ted”. That’s the name we’ve affectionately used for it ever since. The Spanish “Teodoro” is “Theodore” in English. I also like to think of it as an abbreviated version of “te adoro” (“I love you”). Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, a perfect day to spend within the arms of a loving earth and sea.

John Bayerl, 2/16/2024

I recently finished reading David Gann’s masterful, yet shocking historical account of a barely remembered American tragedy that occurred in northeastern Oklahoma in the early 1920’s. It’s about the scores, if not hundreds, of murders perpetrated on the Osage Indians after oil was discovered on their reservation in the early 20th century. By law, the Osage had full financial rights to the profits from all oil extracted from their land. Within a decade, those profits had made the Osage among the wealthiest people in the country. Gann’s book documents the brutal and systematic murders that mostly local, white Oklahomans committed against the Osage in order to get title to their oil “headrights”.

The Osage Indian people, repeatedly uprooted from their traditional homelands in Missouri, Kansas, and Arkansas during the 19th century, were finally given a mostly barren piece of land in the Oklahoma Territory as a reservation. They were able to eke out a subsistence living there and maintained their native cultural and spiritual practices mostly in peace and harmony. After oil was discovered there, their traditional way of life was seriously upended. Many of them became almost instantly wealthy, and this bred a sense of envy and contempt from many of their non-Indian neighbors. In addition, their wealth led to a breakdown of many of the cultural and spiritual beliefs and practices that had sustained them through their long history.

After reading Gann’s carefully researched book, I decided to watch the new Martin Scorsese film adaptation. The film is a whopping three and a half hours long, and I was happy to break up the viewing in digestible portions via a streaming service.

The film has its main dramatic focus on the relationships between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his Osage wife Mollie (Lily Gladstone) and with Ernest’s rapacious uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro). It ignores large sections of Grann’s book dealing with the corrupt and chaotic state of policing in 1920’s Oklahoma and with the backstory of the creation of the FBI. Scorsese co-wrote the screenplay with veteran screenplay adaptor Eric Roth.

I was completely taken by the film from beginning to end. Scorsese took pains to visit the Osage territory and made significant connections with Osage tribal people there. He incorporated a lot of Osage language, customs, and spiritual beliefs as a major thread in the complex tapestry of his cinematic narrative. He humanized the Osage in ways that made the numerous killings by white perpetrators feel even more brutal and inhuman.

The liberties that Scorsese took with the narrative in Gann’s well-documented, nonfiction book made a lot of sense to me. He alters the background of Ernest by portraying him as a WW1 army veteran trying to find his way after witnessing the horrors of early 20th century warfare. This adds a bit more gravitas to the ostensibly naive young man who has come to Osage country seeking his fortune. The film also shows a public parade of Indian war veterans, reminding us that Native Americans have long served in the U.S. armed forces in percentages far greater than that of the white population.

Another plot invention in the film involves a newsreel being shown in a reservation movie theater. The newsreel depicts the destruction of the wealthy African American area of Tulsa in 1921 in what used to be called a “Negro riot” but is now historically understood as an unprovoked aggression by the white population of Tulsa. The “Killers” book and film describe events that occurred just a few years after the white attacks in Tulsa. The Indian people watching the newsreel are horrified, fearing that a similar aggressive violence is being perpetrated on themselves. William Hale, sitting in the back of the theater, admires the white power structure of Tulsa for having succeeded in perpetrating their false, self-serving narrative.

But the biggest liberty that Scorsese takes is his full-fledged dramatic focus on the marital relationship between Ernest and his wealthy Osage wife, Mollie. That relationship is a relatively minor element in the book, but much more so in the film.

Ernest wants to marry Mollie after a brief courtship occurring mostly while he takes her around town in his cab. They have genuine affection and sexual attraction for one another. Ernest’s uncle strongly encourages him to pursue marriage, knowing that he would stand to inherit Mollie’s considerable oil fortune. Mollie is not naïve about Ernest’s financial motivation and even kids him about it. Ernest is naïve enough at that time to assume he could have a happy marriage and raise a family with Mollie independent of his uncle’s ulterior motives. They have a traditional Osage ceremony for their wedding, and William Hale, still regarded as a friend and patron of the Osage people, is an honored guest.

Mollie Burkhart becomes the heart and soul of Scorsese’s film. She is understatedly played by the experienced Native American actress, Lily Gladstone, who grew up on a Blackfoot reservation in Montana. Her performance even eclipses those of DiCaprio and De Niro. Mollie suffers horribly through the course of the story, ultimately losing all three of her sisters in the cynical campaign to steal the oil headrights of the Osage. One of the first murders shown is of her sister Anna in a plot that her husband Ernest was aware of. Earlier, she had lost her sister Minnie to the “wasting disease” – likely the victim of intentional poisoning. In perhaps the most crushing murder, her neighboring sister Reta’s home is dynamited while Reta and her husband are asleep in bed. This time Mollie’s husband Ernest had a more direct hand in the murders, convinced by Hale that it was necessary to ensure that Reta’s fortune would eventually come to him.

Mollie suffers from diabetes. Due to her wealth, she is able to become one of the first people in the country to receive insulin injections. Little does she know that the two doctors treating her (the Shoun brothers) are conspiring with William Hale to keep her incapacitated. The doctors insist that Ernest include another “medicine” in Molly’s daily insulin injections. The result is that Mollie feels more tired and lethargic than ever. It later comes out that Ernest has been unknowingly injecting her with daily heroin.

Throughout her travails, Mollie maintains a loving relationship with her three young children and her mother, Lizzie, who lives with Mollie during Lizzie’s dying days. As Mollie begins having doubts about her husband’s loyalties, Ernest continually reassures her and stays home to nurse her through the worst of her illness. Mollie is somehow able to maintain affection for Ernest even as his part in the growing conspiracy becomes more and more evident.

Scorsese’s screenplay has Mollie make the long train trip to Washington, DC with a small group of other Osage. There she is able to briefly speak with President Calvin Coolidge and plead for help with the horrendous murders occurring in Osage territory, already a major national news story. The film implies that it was Mollie’s plea that initiated the full-fledged FBI investigation that was to ensue. (In Ganns book, Mollie never goes to Washington and the FBI investigation is initiated by a young J. Edgar Hoover, intent on making a name for himself.)

In subsequent interviews, Scorsese freely admits his deviations from the historical record. He says that he was not inspired to create a film along the lines of the extensive criminal investigation that Gann describes in such intricate detail. Instead, he shaped his film around what he does best – penetrating psychological examinations of criminals and their nefarious plots.

The long first part of Gann’s book reads like a nonfiction whodunit. It’s written from the point of view of a criminal investigator charged with gathering information and making assessments as to what is going on within a massive conspiracy that has been unfolding for many years. The criminals include some of those regarded as the most upstanding pillars of the northeastern Oklahoma area.

Scorsese takes a different tack. There is no suspense around who the bad guys are. They are fully revealed for all their dark evil from the beginning. Robert De Nero’s portrayal of William Hale has to rank among the darkest, oiliest portrayals of any American villain. The man is a brilliant sociopath, with no conscience, and therefore able to feign friendship with the Osage and penetrate their most intimate social gatherings and tribal meetings.

David Gann and Martin Scorsese both end their narratives, literary and cinematic, with understated critiques of a society in which such egregious horrors could be perpetrated in such a systematic way for so long a period. Gann returns to Osage territory long after his initial fact-finding tour in order to survey the contemporary state of Osage society. He is sobered as he interviews surviving family members of the victims, but is also buoyed by his encounters with Osage elders and leaders who continue to carry on the spiritual and cultural traditions of their people.

Scorsese’s film ends with two telling artistic statements. First is a brilliant enactment of a late 1920’s radio show, fictionally produced by J. Edgar Hoover, to tout the accomplishments of his newly created agency. In the radio show, Osage murders are only a backdrop to show off the supreme investigative powers of FBI agents. At the end of the radio broadcast, Martin Scorsese himself comes to the microphone. We’re expecting him to speak as Hoover, but instead he simply reads the brief obituary of Mollie Burkhart in which there’s no mention of the murder of her family members. He then mentions the early release from prison of both William Hale and Ernest Burkhart. The audience is left to come to their own assessment.

The very last scene in Scorsese’s film is a moving video portrayal of a contemporary Osage dance ceremony. As the drums beat and the people chant and dance, a drone camera films from above. As the drone moves higher and higher, the full extent of the outdoor dance circle becomes evident. Hundreds of Osage, many in traditional attire, are singing and dancing in unison. As the credits are displayed, the video leaves the audience with a sense that the Osage have somehow managed to survive, and even thrive, despite a wholesale attempt to eliminate them.

John Bayerl, 1/22/2024

Andrea and I attended an emotionally evocative production of the classic 1964 Broadway musical last night with our old friend and neighbor, Liliane, who had asked us to join her. We all had fond memories of the 1971 film that starred the Israeli star, Topol, with music produced by John Williams. I had also seen Herschel Bernardi’s starring role as Tevye on Broadway in 1967 with my parents.

I’d had reservations about seeing this celebration of traditional Jewish culture while Israel’s revengeful war on Gaza continued unabated. I deplored Israel’s disregard for the civilian population of Gaza, including the thousands of deaths of Palestinian children. Like all humanitarians, I was also appalled by the savagery of the Hamas onslaught of October 7, and my heart went out to the innocent Israeli victims and their families. But Israel’s subsequent war of retribution seemed even more appalling.

Settling into our excellent orchestra seats on a frigid December evening, I was able to let go of my concerns and open myself to the stirring drama of Tevye the Jewish milkman and his hard but soulful life with his wife and five daughters in the Russian (now Ukrainian) village of Anatevka in 1905. The actors were entering the stage already, in character, while the audience was still assembling. The set was that of an immigrant transport station with characters carrying luggage and waiting while uniformed guards processed their paperwork. The scene was depicting Tevye and his family as refugees after having been forced to leave their home during a violent pogrom. In that context, the entire story became one long flashback.

The music of “Fiddler” has permeated popular culture since the 1960’s. I had purchased an original-cast recording back then but had forgotten how deeply the songs were embedded in my memory. From the mysterious village fiddler’s first haunting notes, I was transported back to my teenage years when I was first discovering the magic of live theater.

Tevye offers his poignant yet funny opening soliloquy about his hard life and then launches into the riveting, full-cast rendition of “Tradition” – celebrating a world in which everyone knew their place and all life decisions, large and small, were ruled by precedent and patriarchal authority. As the rest of the cast joined in, one at a time, and the stage became a dynamically alive enactment of the villagers’ lives, expressed in fantastic dance choreography and song, I was emotionally transported. It was the magic of American musical theater giving vibrancy to the “traditional” life of a rural Jewish village in Eastern Europe over a century ago. I was close to tears throughout the ensuing unfolding of the poignant drama.

The emotional magic of the music and drama continued unabated through song after song: “Matchmaker”, “If I Were a Rich Man”, “Sabbath Prayer”, “To Life”, “Miracle of Miracles”, “Sunrise, Sunset”, “Do You Love Me”, “Anatevka”. I had forgotten how much I had loved all these songs before even attending that 1967 Broadway production with my parents.

My parents are long deceased, but the show was reminding me of how they had taken the overnight Greyhound bus with me from Buffalo to NYC in September 1967, to help get me oriented at Fordham University in the Bronx. I was of two minds about their accompanying me back then, but watching “Fiddler” this week, I was able to connect with their love and support for me as I started a new life as a college student. My mother liked music and shared my joy at listening to the “Fiddler” record album I had bought. She insisted that we splurge on the three Broadway tickets, and I now feel only gratitude and appreciation. I remembered some of the working-class antisemitism that had been expressed in our extended family circles, and I reflected on the rich appreciation of traditional Jewish culture that all three of us were inspired by as we watched the show together back then.

The Olney Theater production was first rate, as usual. Friends who had seen it earlier had warned us of increased security at the theater owing to an outdoor menorah having been vandalized in the neighborhood. We weren’t put off by the security bag checks, recognizing it as a necessary inconvenience at a time when world events had provoked a rise in both antisemitic and anti-Palestinian sentiments. The production served to universalize the traditionally Jewish themes of the show, casting persons of color in significant roles.

Live theater can be such a powerful vehicle for evoking feelings of appreciation and connection for our common human enterprise. Driving home, Liliane, Andrea, and I all expressed our gratitude for the humanizing effect of attending this beloved musical.

John Bayerl, 12/22/2023