Walking Is Transportation

WHY I DID IT

I can't recall what in particular prompted me, about two years ago or so, to begin sending what are referred to as
'unsolicited contributions' to the Unitarian Church of Staten Island. It wasn't a fund-raising appeal. Like many religious institutions, my local UU church has a fund-raising appeal when it passes the basket every Sunday. Though I'd attended a number of non-religious events held at the church since the 1980s when I stopped attending, I hadn't been to a Sunday service in years.

A likelier explanation, I think, is my sense that in order to continue, the church needs the kind of financial stewardship that liberal institutions enjoy only in upper-middle-class or wealthy communities; and that without at least a measure of such stewardship, its handsome old buildings and grounds might not remain what they've been since my wife and I arrived on Staten Island in 1977 --- a place that, with few resources, tries to make room for individuals of all hues and views, based on a pretty simple set of values and principles, starting with respect. No dogma, no sky-gods, no enforced set of beliefs.

More recently, I felt compelled to deepen my connection beyond mere financial support when I saw a 'Black Lives Matter' banner affixed to the outside of the main church building. That was all the prompting I needed to insert myself once again, beyond dollar contributions, into the ongoing life of this church.

I had drifted away for a while in my early fifties (I'm 74 now) in response to what felt like an urgent need to explore an inherited Jewish identity beyond lox-n-bagels and the few Yiddish expressions that were the sum total of my religio-cultural inheritance. I learned a lot from my six years of Torah study and synagogue membership and, despite my many (inevitable) disagreements with the rabbi who was my teacher, and my discomfort in an all-Jewish, all-the-time environment, I look upon those years as fulfilling and worthwhile.

But I'm profoundly grateful that the Unitarian Church of Staten Island --- founded by abolitionists and home to freethinkers of the present day --- was there to receive me and welcome me back into a community committed to opposing the values and worldview of a Trump presidency and working toward a society that operates on principles of freedom, democracy, and social and economic equality and justice.

I'm not certain whether I'll formalize my affiliation as a member, but I intend, from now on, to lend my presence and my moral and financial support to the life and work of this singular community.

NOTE: Church building photo and banner image from the Unitarian Church of Staten Island website at uucsi.org.

 

MASHA GESSEN: REQUIRED READING

According to Wikipedia, "Masha Gessen is a Russian and American journalist, author, and activist noted for her opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.  . . .  [She] writes primarily in English but also in her native Russian, and  . . .  has been a prolific contributor to such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, New Statesman, Granta, Slate, Vanity Fair, Harper's Magazine, and U.S. News & World Report."

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When journalist Masha Gessen's piece, "Autocracy: Rules for Survival," appeared on November 10 in NYR Daily, the online publication of The New York Review of Books, it was both an announcement and a reflection of the fact that neither outrage nor satire was a sufficient response to Donald Trump's election victory --- though it was a victory that fell well short of the landslide he subsequently proclaimed and was a victory only in the Electoral College, an anachronism that no longer seemed like a quaint formality of our republican origins and more like a dangerous holdover from the nation's slaveholding past that now certified a new and frightening turn in our politics and self-governance.

"Rule #1," Gessen wrote, "Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for rationalization. This will happen often," she continued, writing from her own experience as a journalist who actually worked under Putin as the editor of an official state publication. "[H]umans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable."

Two weeks later, NYR Daily published Gessen's "Trump: The Choice We Face," an argument for making political choices and decisions based not on realism --- whose flaws she illustrates with the tragic story of her Ashkenazic Jewish grandfather's cooperation with the Nazis in the Polish Bialystock ghetto, in the belief that he was lessening suffering and saving lives, when in fact his agonized choice made no difference to the outcome --- but on the moral principles that underlie our politics and, we hope, our daily lives.

These pieces were circulated widely and were followed by a thematically similar front-page article in The New York Times as well as an interview on "All In," Chris Hayes's weekday evening cable news show on MSNBC. Aside from amplifying her voice and solidifying her reputation, Masha Gessen seems to have been influential in turning the discussion, at least on the left, from why Clinton lost/How Trump won, to What is the current state of the nation under Trump, and where do we go next and on what basis?

To this reader, Gessen's chief contribution to our understanding of these times is her insistence on separating truth from facts. Facts are impotent weapons to use in combatting Trump's unabashed lying, Gessen observes, because the function of Trump's lying has nothing to do with truth. The purpose of the lies --- and Trump's oft-repeated claim that ultimately, the truth is unknowable --- is to establish his own reality and reinforce it with the power of the state, which he now controls.

 

 

BEFORE NOVEMBER 8 AND AFTER

What a difference a day makes.

On November 9, when the unimaginable became actual, the fact of Trump, like the fact of Bush in 2000, was enough, more than enough, too much more than enough, to absorb.

The vileness; the oily manipulation some mistake for or confuse with charm; the in-your-face hypocrisy; the shape-shifting of fact --- in which the liar challenges you to prove that his lie is not the truth and overcomes you not with facts but with an audacity that leaves you tongue-tied and scratching your head --- should all have assured his loss to a dull, shopworn-but-competent candidate who would have made the status a little more quo. (Illustration credit: Paxonbothhouses)

NOT HOW IT WENT DOWN

But that's not how it went down. And my reaction, and my wife's, to how it did go down have been surprising. As if we were observing how two other individuals responded, or held those responses in check.

Before November 8, MSNBC was our shared narcotic. Along with the hosts, guests and commentators, we examined what might be the game-changing minutiae of every news-cycle, most seeming to confirm, or at least not challenge, our world-view and our expectations about the reality that would obtain, the day after we cast our vote.

When we turned off MSNBC and went to bed at 3 a.m., only a few hours before dawn on November 9, the outcome had become clear. When we awoke several hours later, the TV in general, and MSNBC in particular, were off and stayed off for several days afterward during which we tried to understand the how and the why, with little input from media and that little mostly from print. (Clip credit: MSNBC)

OUR MEDIA DEFAULTS

When we turned the TV on again several days later, it was with a kind of timidity, as if we were afraid of what we might encounter. How odd that the left-of-center perspective and analysis we'd come to revel in and depend on from MSNBC commentators like Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Joy-Ann Reid and Ari Melber (and others I'm forgetting, I'm sure) had come to seem too dark, too risky to our equilibrium to indulge.

We retreated to what seemed like the safer, more measured news (and broader programming) of PBS and the safer print equivalents --- The New York Times and The New York Review of Books as well as news and podcasts from NPR and The New Yorker. Not that we discussed, strategized or planned it. It was more a matter of recourse to the comfort of the known, to our media defaults, to centrist outlets where we could perch as we found our place and our positions, moorings that I hope will make us braver in this new world we never knew we'd inhabit.

When I began this post on December 10, the world and the way of Donald Trump seemed triumphant. Tweet by tweet, he was ushering in a new reality in which the only certainties, for as long as he chose to uphold and promote them --- several hours? overnight? a day? a week? --- were his characterizations of people and events. 

 

Joy-Ann Reid (Photo credit: wicki-picky.com)

 COUNTER VERSIONS OF REALITY

But now, two days later, counter versions of reality appear to be asserting themselves. The ever-reptilian leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has not endorsed the President-elect's skepticism about Russian hacking of the 2016 elections, preferring the expert research-based judgment of the CIA to the off-the-wall whisperings of Trump's chosen National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn.

And CNN's Jake Tapper has publicly declared his intention to hold politicians' feet to the fire, as is, he says, his job. In a recent interview, the Vice-President elect's feet were the first to feel the heat when he obfuscated and dodged Tapper's question about the transition team's attempts to get a security clearance for the son of Lieutenant General Flynn --- a guy who'd been promoting a fake news story that prompted a right-winger with a rifle to "investigate" the fake story on his own. Flynn's son was shown the door. (Composite photo credit: CNN.com)

If the Trump show is getting a little old even before it really starts . . . if people on the transition team and in government are starting, finally, to play down their association with this guy and to set some limits , , , then there may be hope. Not for a change in policy positions but for a landmark outburst that fans the flames of buyer's remorse and begins to chip away at his seeming invincibility.  ###

 

 

KRUGMAN'S RESPONSE TO TRUMP: 'RADICAL NON-COOPERATION'

In a talk live-streamed from the main branch of the New York Public Library last night, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist who teaches at the City University of New York, had few action-steps to recommend to his audience whom, he seemed to assume, were, like him, academics (or, at least, readers of The New York Review of Books).

Krugman seemed to be pondering his own role as a public intellectual in the time of Trump, echoing the point of view expressed by journalist Masha Gessen (formerly a journalist in Putin’s Russia), writing in NY Review of Books about strategies for living under the thumb of an autocracy.

Chief among these was the importance of resisting the reassurance of how much remains the same, downplaying or denying the impact of corruption, intimidation, self-censorship and the loss of freedoms, most significantly of speech. Most memorably, to me, Krugman called for “radical non-cooperation” with policies and initiatives (such as, currently, the proposal to grant an exception that would compromise civilian control of the military by naming as Secretary of Defense a general who has not been out of the military the seven years required by law).

Don’t give up and hide, he added, and don’t accommodate actions or policies that compromise your principles.

I think the path forward for those on the left will become clearer as events unfold. The emerging story, for example, that Washington lobbyists like former Senator Bob Dole are shaping foreign policy — specifically, sidestepping U.S. policy re China and cozying up to Taiwan before Trump is even officially installed as president. ###

You can stream Krugman's talk here:  https://livestream.com/theNYPL/events/6484656

(Photo credit not provided.)

 

ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, IT'S TRUMP, NOT DRUMPF

As a copy supervisor once informed me (though I think he thought he was reminding me), if wordplay is to have any effect, it's best used sparingly. So I won't, as I promised in an earlier post, refer to the President-elect as Drumpf. Mostly.

In fairness, the man with the flax-woven pate should have the same right to reinvention via a change of name that my mother claimed when, unable to find a job during the Great Depression, she tried on a succession of names, going from Krawetzsky to Kravitz to Kravitt to the French-sounding Cravet, the name under which she became a naturalized American citizen, explaining the name change on her application papers as one she'd decided on because it sounded "less foreign."

So, as The Donald's first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, decided --- did he really have a choice? --- WIT will let Drumpf be Trump. ###  (No photo credit provided.)

DANKE, HERR DRUMPF

(Credit: LMIII (@artiste643)

[NOTE: 'Drumpf' is the real family name of the President-elect and the name I'll use to refer to this loutish know-nothing henceforth. After Drumpf's congressional lackeys do his bidding, as seems likely even now, and try to revise the libel laws to his liking --- part of the constitutional revision process he'll undertake, like so much else he's promised, "on my first day in office" --- I may come to regret this post. But for now, perhaps naively, I'll assume my First Amendment rights are strong enough to survive even him.]

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I stopped smoking. I started drinking tea. Tea --- me! I even bought a teapot. And now, as we near the first monthly anniversary of Drumpf's President-electedness, after a two-month sciatic flare-up and nearly two and a half years of silence, I and my now nearly decade-old blog, WALKING IS TRANSPORTATION, are finding our voice again, prompted by the ascent to national leadership of our own home-grown autocrat --- a millionaire's son from Jamaica Estates, Queens --- whom the multitudes, including the majority of voters in my own New York City borough of Staten Island, claim as one of their own.

Though its antecedents in history are clear enough, the Drumpf phenomenon has defied the attempts of journalists, Washington insiders, academics and others considered experts to chart its course or predict its outcome. What I think is at least possible, perhaps likely, is a flowering of the arts and of political organizing and protest, as the truth about who Drumpf is, what he represents and what he wants become clear --- one hopes, especially to those who bought his lies. ###

 

WELCOME TO WIT.

WIT isn't about walking and it isn't about transportation.

It used to be about those things, but there was only so much I, then a recently retired editor and business writer, could find to say about them. Or, indeed, about historic preservation or community affairs or the quirkiness of the New York City borough, Staten Island, where I and my wife, Manhattan natives both, have lived most of our lives, mostly in the house pictured above near the docking-place of the Staten Island Ferry, in St. George.

Of the 200-plus posts recorded here since 2007, the bulk were written between that year and 2009, followed by restart attempts in 2009, 2010, 2012 and 2014 --- failures all. So what makes me think this restart, in early December, 2016, won't meet the same fate? I'm prompted to try again by the prospect of living with a national leader lacking any of the traditional qualifications associated with the office he's about to occupy or the duties he's about to assume.

Like many, perhaps most people who do what I've done for a living most of my life, I write to discover what I feel and think. Considering what we're up against, being in touch with what I feel and think doesn't seem like an option; more like a duty.

As it has for much of its history, WIT will appear irregularly. To read newer posts, please click on the title to the right of the word 'Main' at the top of this page; to read older ones, please click on the title to the left. To follow WIT, please click on the 'Subscribe to this blog's feed' link in the column to the left of the center text.

Welcome to WIT.

 

ABOUT-FACE

On MSNBC and other cable news channels, they call what I'm about to do 'walking it back.'

Which means, I'm about to write that what I wrote --- in my last post about FreshDirect™ --- does not reflect my current thinking. [FreshDirect is an online ordering and delivery service for groceries and other household items that I patronized during the month of March, 2014.]

When I wrote that post on April 19, I had just checked the statement from the bank card I used to pay for FreshDirect deliveries. I wasn't just shocked by the total amount I spent with FreshDirect; I felt like an idiot for paying what I could see were plainly higher, sometimes considerably higher, prices. If you're choosing between two heads of garlic, I reasoned, how could choosing the higher-priced one possibly be worth it?

Here's my walk-back: I was wrong. It's worth it.

My resolve to go back to the much lower prices of my neighborhood supermarket, Western Beef™, began to crumble almost immediately. It started with my wife recalling how much better FreshDirect produce tasted, how much fresher and more flavorful. Wasn't it worth paying the price for something you really enjoy?, she asked, completely reasonably.

But what made me return to online ordering was a weekful of ancient, tasteless carrots and rotten turnips, following a bagful of Long Island potatoes we had to throw out --- all from our local supermarket. Suddenly paying less didn't seem so important or so smart.

Our first order since our return to FreshDirect arrived this morning. Every item was big, beautiful and healthy, and beautifully packed. What's more, I know everything will taste terrific --- and if it doesn't, I'll get a refund. Paying more in this case seems very wise indeed.

 

 

MY MONTH WITH FRESH DIRECT™

It was a pleasure. A guilty one.

The whole idea of ordering groceries online and having them delivered for an extra charge (plus tip) seemed to me like the sort of thing people do in Area Code 212 and certain select sectors of 718, but not in my sector, not on Staten Island.

Besides, I told myself, I'm not the sort of person who orders from FreshDirect and never would be, no matter which area code I lived in. Except that now, I was that sort of person. I did indeed do that sort of thing.

My reasons were a wife just home from the hospital and facing a life-changing treatment regimen. An adult son who's part of our household, temporarily incapacitated from a work injury. Unending snow and ice. And a raft of housekeeping duties that I no longer shared but had to assume whole, and overnight, many involving food. These in addition to my responsibilities as manager of the small rental property we live in.

More like gifts than groceries

Right from the start, FreshDirect browsing, buying, receiving, storing and eating was not only easy and straightforward; it was fun. On the day and time I'd reserved, an unfailingly pleasant and efficient delivery person would arrive with a bounty of carefully packed corrugated boxes that seemed like gifts, not groceries.

My wife was the first to notice how beautiful everything looked, how fresh and flavorful everything tasted.

For her, it was the string beans. For me, it was a highly touted brand of grapefruit, every segment plump, juicy and delicious. Large, super-sweet tangerines with skin so loose, they practically peeled themselves. And collard greens and kale and brussel sprouts that looked, cooked and tasted like advertisements for themselves.

What we could afford

And then, all in a flash, we understood: Our working-class families had never had access to this kind of quality.Though we had always been diet-conscious, always eaten pretty sensibly, we had shopped for and eaten what we could afford. And what we could afford was sometimes, well, lesser. 'Choice,' not 'Fancy.' 'Grade B,' not 'Grade A.'

We wouldn't choose the big, beautiful, blemish-free FreshDirect apples grown in nearby orchards and sold, like jewels, in a styrofoam four-pack. Instead, we'd choose the three-pound bag containing smaller, less perfect specimens. In citrus, not the impeccable tangerine gleaming a color-corrected super-orange, but the smaller orangey-yellow one with the super-tight spider-veiny skin that's a struggle to peel.

How the other half eats

I feel it as a failure of character that while I can often taste the difference between Fancy and Grade A or between Grades A and B, I'm often unwilling to pay extra for the extra quality. Which, now that I think of it, pretty much sums up my experience with Fresh Direct.

For one month, I tasted how the other half eats. Everything was fresher, better looking and more flavorful, with fewer disappointments and less waste. The ordering and delivery processes were, similarly, nearly flawless.

Back to The Beef

But at the end of that month, I learned that perfection was unaffordable.My non-revolving credit-card bill showed that in a single month, I had spent nearly $500, which didn't include my bodega runs, or my wife's.

An item-by-item price comparison of FreshDirect with our local supermarket, Western Beef, confirmed we were indeed eating beyond our means. On a single representative order, we had spent nearly $13 more buying from Fresh Direct --- not including the delivery charge and the tip.

Clearly, it was time to go back to The Beef.

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(NOT) BECOMING DIGITAL

I remember well the first time, four or five years ago, when I sat down at a restaurant table with three friends and soon noticed I was the only one whose place setting didn't include a smartphone.

I also noticed what seemed to me like a more animated, expectant, even nervous manner among my tablemates than I was accustomed to.Their eyes in particular were more active, darting in a continuous cycle from face to food to phone, always returning to phone, more a Home to many people these days than anything brick-and-mortar.

Until that fateful meal, I had thought of what I then called cellphones as pretentious gadgets for people with an exaggerated sense of their own importance. What I failed to grasp, then and for a long time after, was that cellphones/smartphones, social media and all the other products and tangible/observable effects of digital technologies are not the real story. The real story is the transformative impact of these technologies, products and effects on individuals, institutions and culture.

THE LURE

But of course the principal transformative impact I was concerned about was the impact on me. Particularly after my wife got an I-Phone and I was able not just to witness but to experience firsthand --- and appreciate! --- the benefits of 24/7 accessibility. With a cellphone, I realized, and even more with a smart one, all kinds of things were possible now that weren't possible before. 

 

I was tempted; no question about it. I could feel myself laying some of the mental foundation for an affirmative decision. I pictured myself on the ferry, sitting back with my device and confronting all those apps, all that connectivity, everything in the immediate now. I imagined how cool it would be to hold up my smartphone so the Starbucks cash register could read it and deduct the appropriate amount from my debit account (I don't have a smartphone OR a debit card).

Still, I had misgivings. My older son Evan's counsel echoed in my head: "Once you get one, Dad, there's no going back." The memory of my first Meal With Smartphones kept resurfacing darkly as well. And then, right on cue, my knee-jerk nonconformism kicked in: Did I really want to join the ranks of those who, at any time and in every place, can be found staring down into the face of some digital device?

THIS FAR AND NO FARTHER

Which gets down to the real issue for me. The total-immersion-ness of smartphones. The idea that with this device, where everything you could possibly want or need is centralized and accessible, you've got it under control. When, in fact, it's got you under control. Or so it seems to me.

That's what I keep coming back to. My discomfort at the total surrender this device requires --- including walking around with a tracking device on your person, 24/7. And something more as well: my real fear of becoming addicted to the device and the withdrawal and isolation that addiction might prompt.

My office desktop and my laptop in the kitchen (which also has a cable TV connection) are already a kind of smartphone, without the phone, I guess; and I'm certainly fully addicted to those. For now, that's enough. This far and no farther. ### 

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