I have a lot more to say (well, it is me) but not a lot of time at the moment. But I thought you might want to see this list of pro-our-tribe organizations that could use your support right now.
Archive for Blog
Where We Go From Here
First: If you’re a Trump supporter and you’ve come to gloat, don’t do it. I will delete your post. I thought this election would prove that the forces of unity were stronger than the forces of division, but I was wrong. You’ve won; and you’ve made it clear this is still a tribal nation. Go talk to your tribe.
I’m here to talk to mine: to my beautiful rainbow, mosaic, melting pot, polyglot tribe. The openhearted tribe whose hearts have been broken, the generous hopefuls who thought this was our moment to step into the sun.
It’s not. It’s the thrashing death throes of misogyny, racism, anti-intellectualism — I do think they’re dying, yes, but the thrashing can kill us, too.
So what do we do?
Did you hear Hillary’s concession speech? Did you see her face while she talked?
We keep fighting, in whatever way we can.
What ways are those?
My sister got up this morning and made contributions she couldn’t afford to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
The Center for Fiction here in NYC will be open tonight for writers to come together, share a mic and a glass of wine, talk about what this might mean, about how people feel.
People are talking about running for the small, local offices, to do the grassroots work.
This administration will probably cut the budgets for education, the arts, the environment. It will dismantle the Affordable Care Act. If you can volunteer at a school nearby, at Audubon, at a hospital to relieve the pressure, do that. If you can’t, maybe you could go to Staples and buy art supplies for a kindergarten class. There are small things we can do, until we have our strength back.
And the smallest and most important: be kind to each other. Here in NYC, where so many people are in a sort of mourning, people made eye contact all day as they walked by, smiled, held doors, wished me good day. As did I, to them. Do these things for people, especially people of our tribe who might have reason to feel threatened now in the dark days to come, and notice when people do these things for you. Be mindful of each act of kindness.
Am I planning to volunteer, will I run for local office? Right now what I want to do is crawl under the blankets and stay there for the next four years. Right now I feel stunned, shocked, feel the same as I did the day after 9/11. But I’ll recover. I did then, though it changed me forever. I’m a writer, a solitary profession, so maybe that’s the best thing for me to do: write. I’ll do what I can. You do what you can. Will it be enough? I don’t know. But I do know this: if we do nothing, that will most certainly NOT be enough.
I leave you with a Jewish saying: It is not given to you to finish the work, but neither are you free to refrain from it.
Do every small thing you can. Then, maybe, do bigger things. We can start to build again. Just keep the tribe together.
Live at Susan B. Anthony’s grave
Live feed from Susan B. Anthony’s grave. People leaving flowers and their “I Voted” stickers. Made me cry. I love this country and we’re stronger together!
My grandmother, my mother, and the vote
My grandmother was born in this country, where she could not vote. My mother, her second child, was born the year women got the vote, a few weeks after the first election women were allow to vote in. When I was a kid, my mother would wait to vote until my father came home. She’d have dinner all ready, but before we ate we’d all go to the local high school where we’d all stand in line together and then each of them would go in the voting booth. They wanted to make sure we all understood how special this right was. When I became eligible to vote I cast my first few votes in that high school.
I’m speaking now to women. If you’re so disgusted with both parties you’ve thrown up your hands and have decided the whole thing stinks so badly you’ll have nothing to do with it, that’s a healthy reaction. But not a practical one. One of these two people will be President. If you don’t vote for the woman, you’re voting for the man who pushes himself on women. The man who rates women on a ten-point scale and says women who have abortions should be punished.
You don’t have to love her. You don’t even have to like her. But you can’t sit it out. If you like him less, then get out and vote. Vote for your mother, your grandmother, all your female ancestors back through the mists of time. All those women who had no say. You have a say. VOTE!
Grandma says: VOTE!
Thoughts on the election
In a comment on another post, Li Ann asked about my thoughts on the election. She said she knew I had distinct opinions. Well, I sure do. I know lots of people don’t like Hillary Clinton. They don’t trust her. Okay, fine. To them I say: Do you LIKE Donald Trump? Do you trust HIM? Because if you don’t get out and vote for her, he’ll be President. There is no third way here. There’s no sitting this one out. The man who said that Mexico is sending its rapists, that African-Americans are living in hell, that Muslims should be banned from entering the country, that when you’re a star women let you do whatever you want, that he knows more about ISIS than the generals and that “I love war,” that man will be President. Is that really okay with you? If it’s not, then get out and vote for Hillary. Otherwise, you’re voting for Trump. You are. And if he’s elected, you who did not vote will have done it.
Hunter’s Moon and the Brooklyn Bridge
Sunday, Oct. 16, the Hunter’s Moon rose over NYC. The Hunter’s Moon is the full moon after the Harvest Moon, which is the one closest to the fall equinox. The Hunter’s Moon is also called the Blood Moon, and this year it rose big and red. A bunch of us, led by the indomitable Keith Michael, wanted to see it from the Brooklyn Bridge, so we did.
Strolling over the bridge in sunset.
Just taking photos.
Just taking more photos.
Cables at sunset.
Cables after sunset.
Manhattan gets pastel at dusk…
…and colorful after dark.
Finally, the Hunter’s Moon.
It rises through the cables of the Manhattan Bridge, in the distance.
The higher it goes, the more color it loses.
In the cables, it looks doubled.
Then the Man in the Moon just looks confused.
Finally, peering into other peoples’ windows through the reflections in their glass, we head off the bridge and home.
John D. Macdonald on the BBC
On the BBC Radio website, Lee Child’s piece on John D. MacDonald, with a whole buncha writers chiming in, including me!
Here’s the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07x6j4n
More Mississippi
Now that I have a little leisure — after the New Orleans/Mississippi trip there were Philadelphia and Saratoga Springs, and the teaching semester started — I’m catching up on some photos I wanted to show you. At Dunleith Castle, a mansion we toured in Natchez, one of the rooms has absolutely sensational wallpaper. Les Zones Terrestres by the Zuber Co. is what it sounds like — all the climates of the earth, shading into one another in a 33-panel spread that wraps around the room. These are details. I was hoping to find more complete photos on the Zuber website, but no. The blocks it was printed from were destroyed during WWII, so it’s not made anymore. It’s astoundingly beautiful. The White House has a Zuber wallpaper, Vues de l’
The four Rozan/Rosan siblings
All of us in Saratoga Springs for the Bat Mitzvah of my brother Al’s oldest son’s daughter. First time the four of us have been together in seventeen years. From left to right, Debby, Naomi, Al, me.
Bouchercon Panel
If you get to where you can’t stand it during the VP debate tonight or the Prez debate on Sunday, here’s twenty minutes of the Bouchercon panel I was on with Lawrence Block, Bill Crider, Joe Lansdale, and Catherine Coulter.
