Life is a Narrow Bridge

  Let’s talk about the past for a moment. 1904– lots of my ancestors came to the US that year. The Dutch merchant ancestors came for business. They had some funds, but not a lot. The Eastern European ancestors also came for a better life— not only in terms of opportunity but also due to religious discrimination. They had so little money that family units split, sending fathers ahead before their children in order to earn passage. What did my relatives need in order to enter the US? 1. They had to pass a medical test. No tuberculosis, STDs, or epilepsy. (I’d have been sent back if they knew about my seizures. I probably wouldn’t have shared that!) 2. They had to prove that they wouldn’t be destitute for lack of a job. 3. They had to produce a letter from a friend or a relative in the US to prove their identity. 4. If they had a criminal conviction demonstrating “moral turpitude” for transgressions such as polygamy, or if they were anarchists, they could be excluded. Look at number ...

  They say the “Fourth Estate” or “Fourth Power” is the news and other media. It is different from the religion, politics and common people, but holds a power all its own. Think about the saying “The pen is mightier than the sword.” If used correctly, the media can stave off armies. "The pen is mighter than the sword"  at the Library of Congress Unfortunately, the heritage media has lately been a more divisive force in American society. It has become an extended arm of political parties and of the powerful elite. Rather than being a communication tool that boosters trust, some media sources have been chiseling away at foundations of our society. It’s interesting how this distrust falls a few decades after the fall of the fairness doctrine, which required equal air time to opposing points of view. It falls a few decades after the prevalence of cable tv (and then satellite and streaming services…) with the splintering of programming options. And it falls even more intensely int...

I 'm the daughter of a professor and a lawyer. From my English teacher Mom, I've learned to be a treasure-seeker: find the good in everything (and make grammar tweaks when needed!). From my attorney father, I've learned to be a problem-solver: anticipate the pitfalls and make sure to avoid them. This is a bit of an understatement. Treasure or problem--it's also a matter of optimism and dread, fierce joy or protective anger. The world needs both, and I was raised in the middle of these passionate polarities. A teacher myself, I've become very familiar with Mom's art. We read Shakespeare together as a family, and she analyzed poems with me as she would do with her students. Because she knew I wouldn't talk in the back of the classroom like my big sister did, she let me come along a few times. (I was traumatized by Blade Runner and much preferred hanging out in the Hofstra Library.) In recent years, I've helped her run technology for Zoom teaching and love ...

  Growing up, I did not know what a quesadilla was. It just wasn't a thing in my Long Island of the 1970s. From Sesame Street, I learned how to find the Salida (exit) and I practiced counting from uno to diez. From my family's travels, I knew how generous and inclusive children in Mexico could be. But I didn't know a quesadilla from a churro, or tamales from enchiladas. And I certainly did not know the Cinco de Mayo. It wasn't a big thing in the Northeast...not yet. In fact, it isn't a big thing in much of Mexico, now, either. It's a local festival in Puebla, not Mexican Independence Day. Cinco de Mayo celebrates the victory of a small Mexican army against a larger, well-armed French fleet. (In fact, shortly thereafter, Emperor Maximilian I of France took over our southern neighbors for a few years. The May fifth victory did not stick.) Sesame Street used "Salida" and Spanish numbers as part of their mission to serve underserved urban youth. US beer c...

  You could call her Frankenstein's grandmother. But you'd have to be clear: Frankenstein has become fake news in our society. Most people think of him as the green-faced monster, but in fact, Dr. Frankenstein is the fictional scientist who created the creature...which eventually became his undoing. You could call her Dr. Frankenstein's grandmother--and since he created the monster, I guess you could call her the green-faced villain's great-grandmother. Mary Wollstonecraft was all of that. She was Mary Shelley's mother, and she was an author and scholar in her own right. She also coined the phrase "fake news". The context is important here. Wollstonecraft was a philosopher and an outspoken feminist back in the 18th century. She travelled to France in the middle of the French Revolution. There, she knew that she was in danger. New friends of hers had been sent to the guillotine. As an intellectual and an advocate, she decided to research and archive the hor...

  Have you heard the new comparison of fiction and non-fiction? I rather like it. Instead of focusing on whether something is made-up or not, this set of definitions compares how you learn. Fiction is "learning through imagination" and non-fiction is "learning through information." There's the folktale written by Hans Christian Andersen way back in the 1800s about a young boy attending a royal procession in which a pompous king is sporting a new outfit spun by the world's best weavers. In fact, the king has been duped; he is buck naked. We learn from this fiction that a king can be duped. Royalty can be controlled. Rulers can act with excessive pride. Though the sycophant community goes along with the king and pretends he is elegantly clothed, a young boy will have none of that. He blurts out what nobody else is brave enough to utter: the emperor has no clothes! Here we are reminded of that adage attributed to both Abe Lincoln and PT Barnum about how you ca...