The West Wing and Rose Garden

The West Wing and Secret Poems

My brother and I have been watching episodes of the late, great, The West Wing with our Roku. We have gone from 1999 to mid-way through 2001. Drago and I try not to repeat our comments about life too often to each other, so I only say, “It’s all the same!” every other night. Not the personal dramas that the writers wove into the episodes, but the politics, are all the same. Foreign affairs, economics, healthcare, violence against women and equal pay for women, race, immigration, national security versus the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, crime and punishment, poverty, education, education, education. It’s not just that we were talking about these things enough to make them viable topics for a TV show 14 years ago, it’s that, in an almost unbearable way, people, depending on their party affiliation, were saying the same things. We haven’t seen an episode revolving around LGBT issues yet, but I’m sure that will come up soon. President Jed Bartlett is a hugely erudite man, with a background that includes a Nobel Prize for Economics. And guess what? He is accused of being an elitist and out of touch with average citizens. He makes determined efforts to be seen as “folksy” until his staff brings it home to him that he has a big league brain and that’s what the country needs. With the “scandals” of the past week in mind, if you can, watch some of The West Wing again. It will make you laugh, and it will make you cry.

I haven’t been posting on my blog as much as I used to and I realized I missed it. I’ve been writing more than ever, though. Poetry, mostly, but I’ve been keeping the poems fairly secret. Once you post a poem or piece of fiction on a blog, it is considered published and you can’t submit it to publications like The Dog-Eared Review, The Slapping Thigh Journal, The Poet’s Cornfield,  or The New Yorker. I’ve been the poetry editor for The Linnet’s Wings since 2007 (with two issues off; one because I had open-heart surgery that summer, ACK!, and this summer’s, because the wonderful poet Elizabeth Glixman is guest editing for me) and at TLWs we don’t object to previously published work. We want good work, and if it’s shown up elsewhere, too, the chances are VERY SMALL that the same readers will see it again and think, “Oh, how boring, I’ve read this already.” So, anyways, having had a collection of my poems turned into a book, One Day Tells its Tale to Another, (rude product placement there, but this is, after all, my blog) and sent it out into the world, I’ve decided to send new poems out into the world of literary journals and see if anything comes of it. That’s what I used to do with poems, before I started Augustine’s Confessions, then I decided it was much more likely that people would read my blog than The Palm Tree and the Clay Pot Journal. And I was right. As Bill Maher would say, “I kid.” There are stunning literary journals to be read, filled with remarkable writers who are not yet famous, but may become so one day. We keep it all afloat, don’t we? “It” being the marvelous, maddening, inborn drive to  put things we think down in writing.

Getting back to The West Wing, somewhat neatly, I think: My brother and I watched an episode the other night titled “The U.S. Poet Laureate.” Toward the end of the hour (which is only 43 minutes long when you don’t have to watch commercials) she, Tabitha Fortes, has just given a lecture at Georgetown University, and Toby Ziegler, President Bartlett’s Communications Director, asks a professor if there was any press at the lecture. The professor says, (I may not have the exact words, but here’s the gist) “Well, no. It was poetry.”

Seriously

When I was a junior in high school I ran for Secretary of my senior class.  I’d been elected to the student council each year and I thought I could do a good job taking minutes and all. I’m pretty sure I got on the student council, my entry into politics, my freshman year because I had two well-known, well-liked, handsome older brothers. They paved the way. Even though my personal ambitions were of the ballerina-kind, I was a good kid and listened to all the adult voices that claimed beefing up my list of extra-curricular activities was the way to go if I wanted to get in to a good college. I didn’t know then that Juilliard, the only college I wanted to attend, would not be impressed by my being elected Secretary of my senior class. I campaigned, (hung posters around the school) wrote a speech, and was, to my amazement, elected! No one knew what courage this whole business demanded. I was shy, did not have an approved wardrobe bought in the favored store in nearby Ridgewood, New Jersey, and, a very tricky bit for me, had a bilateral lisp. I dreaded giving my speech to the entire student body (about 400 kids.) But I did it and that was my political career. I have no idea why I won-possibly because I had fewer enemies than the other candidates; my trudge through high school hadn’t included much drama, if any. There was plenty of drama in my dance life, but I didn’t think that counted very heavily outside of various studios.

I’ve always been bowled over by national politicians. They are of another species.  They want to make decisions for other people. Lots of other people. They want to lead public lives and know that they will make enemies and that people will say mean things about them. How about that? Even when they are successful and their side wins an argument, they just wake up to a day filled with new battles.  It must be tremendously difficult to be in the public eye and yet stay out of trouble and easy as pie to slide into a quagmire of one kind or another. Yet these men and women run for office thoughout their lives, ever trying to keep their names on more and more lips, their pictures on more posters, and their speeches heard by bigger crowds. Holy cannoli! Not a life for me.

I’ve been a serious voter though. I do my best. Talk, read, listen; try to figure things out so that I can make educated choices. Not so easy.  I’ve been bamboozled a few times-and I’ve certainly gone with the losing side and had to live with people who I had no faith in being the boss of me, at least for a term or two.  But, you know, Obama is someone I trust. I think I have from the get-go. I like that he’s tall and has a great smile; I like his wife and kids; I like his background and think it’s cool that he’s of mixed race, and I trust him. I believe that he does his best, and I find that I’ve never had reason to question his choices as our President. So, with this, with the killing of an unarmed monster named Osama bin Laden, I’m not going to wrestle with something that until now I’ve not had to deal with. A murderer was murdered in my name and that’s all right with me. I didn’t dance in the streets about it, but I’m not surprised that many people did. If bin Laden had been shooting at the SEALS, I wouldn’t have had to re-organize, accommodate, think about this news at all. It’s just that I grew up believing it was wrong to shoot an un-armed man, and now I need to believe that in this case, in Osama bin Laden’s case, it was an okay thing to do.  And I’m going with that. I’ve stretched a little and that’s fine. I’m on board.

Stop Yelling at Me!

I am not going to accept responsibility for global warming, the war in Iraq, the corruption of our politicians, the poverty of 37% of American children, FEMA's response to Katrina, or any of the rest of the horrible things in the world that i hate. I will accept responsibility for voting according to my conscience, after trying to become educated through sources that I have been told throughout my life, maybe do, maybe don't tell me the truth.

For fifteen years I taught special education but ,all, I could do, on a daily basis, was my job. I could work ten hour days, love the kids, and do what I could get away with about teaching them things that would be useful to know, as opposed to things that would be on a test, and what I knew about solving problems. I couldn't overrule the school boards, build the children who were homeless, homes, or put their families back together. I couldn't even put people in my own family back together, once they had fallen apart.

Everywhere that I've lived as an adult, except for New York City and southern England, places that had realistic public transportation, I've always had a car. I've had to if I wanted to work, eat, live. I will buy a hybrid as soon as I can-but that might be tricky because I'm on disability for heart disease, which developed when I was teaching and may well have had something to do with frustration. There are many Americans on fixed incomes because they are sick or got old, who would also like to buy hybrids and live in solar heated homes.

i vote for people who say they are doing what they believe will help the environment, but I can't send money to every foundation that wants me to save the polar bears, as much as I'd like to. Or the wolves. I'd like to save them, too. But in defense, I did spend a year caring for my elderly mother during the last year of her life, and now I look after my father and my brother, who also has a serious health problem.

I do not spend hours writing to representatives, making phone calls or campaining for people who I think might do a better job running the country than the...crew running it now. I'm too busy trying to cope with doing the best I can with my family, myself, my neighbors, and yes, dammit, my art.

I don't feel like I got what I asked for, and I don't think I'm an Ugly American. Since reaching adulthood during the Vietnam War, no, since my teenage years during the Civil Rights movement, I've, with lapses certainly, done my best to make things right. So stop yelling at me for being responsible for the mess. I did not acquiesce to the current state of the world. i didn't. I never did. And now, I'll go check on my father.

Man of my Dreams

I have a new crush. Bigger than the ones I have for George Clooney, johnny Depp, and a mandolin player I met in Savannah. This crush is huge. The guy wears glasses, has grey hair, broad shoulders, dresses in good suits, and spits his words with courage and decisiveness. Yes, that's right. The man who used his MSNBC spot to ask, no, demand, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney search their souls for any remaining smidgens of decenecy and patriotism and resign from their offices.

Mr. Olbermann left movie stars and mandolin players in the dust. He's my new dreamboat, fantasy guy, companion for the proverbial desert island. His wife and kids, if he has them, (I'll google) need not worry, however. I've yet to stalk, write, call, or camp on the doorsteps of my other crushes during the course of my life. But, I gottatellya, his speech on July 3rd, during "Countdown" stirred my loins, put a gleam in my eyes, moved my heart to race, stopped, for a bit at least, the merry-go-round of my repetitious, disgusted, political thought-tape.
Bravo Mr. Olbermann. My heart is yours.