Let’s Hear It for Massachusetts Politics

 

 

Rally vs. Trump in Northampton on his birthday

 

Readers of this blog know that I lambast politicians on a regular basis just to stay in shape. This time I’m here to praise a few, not bury them. I’m lucky enough to live in Massachusetts, where politics is serious stuff. We actually expect our elected officials to listen to us. If you’re not good with constituent service, you’re chum for bigger fish.

 

Let me lead with something that made me proud to live in Northampton. On Saturday, thanks to the tireless efforts of our friend Devin Bruce and a generous donation from Marjorie Hess, we dedicated a roofed, outdoor stage at the Forbes Library. Such things happen across the country, but how often do you find a state senator dancing with the city mayor? Mayor Gina-Louise Sciara was unabashedly sashaying with Senator Jo Comerford, as Representative Lindsay Sabadosa, several city councilors, library trustees, the Forbes director, and the audience applauded. This wasn’t a political stunt; it’s how Jo and Lindsay act most of the time. Some in the crowd were elderly and I watched Jo and Lindsay offer their arms to help them get up and down. Jo told me it’s one of her favorite things to do. I hugged both of them, whom I see at my local café, and told them they “rock.” I don’t always agree with our mayor, but I’d be the last to say she doesn’t care. 

 

A shout out to U.S. Representative Jim McGovern. He lives in Worcester, an hour away, but his district is large. Jim is a member of the Amherst Cinema and attends all manner of events west of Worcester. How many people can say that about their U.S. Reps? He’s also an outspoken critic of Donald Trump. Jim attends protests and holds town forums on current politics that fill halls and large churches.

 

Most of us in Western Mass also love U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and find it rude, crude, and unrefined when Trump calls her Pocohantes. He hates her because she speaks truth to power and is uncowed by his bullying tactics. She knows way more about economics than Trump, supports working people, and thinks that consumer protection is far more important that unbridled capitalism. Nor is she afraid to rub noses with the masses.

 

Our governor is Maura Healey, the first lesbian governor of any state. Yeah, she’s the kind of person Republican radicals think is immoral. She was attorney general before she was governor and here’s what her “lifestyle choice,” as conservatives like to call it, affects her job. Not. One. Damn. Bit. I sometimes wish she was more forceful, but she has a 60% approval rating. Trump’s is 39%. ‘Nuff said.

 

How about Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston? She calls herself a “pragmatic liberal” and embodies that label. She not only supports working women, she has served on both the city council and as mayor while nursing her newborns. Wu helped develop the Boston Green New Deal, stood up to Trump when he claimed Boston was riddled by crime by using actual statistics, has told ICE it’s not welcome, and gets along well with cops and fire fighters. Right-leaning opponents got behind Josh Kraft, son of the New England Patriots owner. Wu crushed him in the primary with 72% of the vote.

 

The cherry on the sundae is that because we border Vermont, Bernie Sanders is a frequent visitor!

 

Area Code 413. That's us!

 It's true that neither Vermont nor Massachusetts is a utopia, but if you’re a dispirited progressive and can’t stand living in a red state any longer, move to Deep Blue Massachusetts. Even better, come to Western Mass, as pockets of old-style machine politics proliferate in Eastern Mass. In addition to the pols I praised, other progs in Western Mass include: Natalie Blais, Mindy Domb, Adam Gómez, Homar Gomez, Robyn Kennedy, David LeBouef, Jake Oliveira, and Budd Williams. Massachusetts grades strictly by percentages on the progressive scale. If you only vote according that scale 71% of the time, you get a C-! My apologies if I missed a few progressives. What a treat to live in a region where the list of hacks is short and mayors dance with state senators. 

 

Rob Weir

Musings on Charlie Kirk

 

 

Cut Off the Oxygen

 

There’s a John Prine* song with a chorus that goes: Blow up your TV. Throw away your paper/Go the country. Build you a home/Plant a little garden. Eat a lotta peaches/Try an’ find Jesus, on your own.

 

I already have a home in the woods, albeit in the ‘burbs, and my gardening skills are minimal, but the rest of the song (“Spanish Pipe Dream”) resonates. I pulled out one of my guitars, sang it, and smiled, though I was in terrible voice. (This happens about every other time I play these days.)

 

This is my prelude to Charlie Kirk. I had never heard of him until he was shot. I wish he hadn’t been; I was much happier when he was a complete unknown instead of a right-wing martyr. I’ve known lots of guys like Kirk and have done my best to ignore them rather than getting bent out of shape about what they say. The town where I grew up had/has many evangelicals and very few Jews or Catholics. I’ve not done a head count but it’s possible evangelicals outnumber mainstream Protestants. I have gone to a few evangelical services out of curiosity. To say they were not my thang is an understatement.

 

During my young adulthood there were other voices that conflated faith with capitalism, love of celebrity, or both. I admire religious people who hold fast to faith as a way to live a good life. I too was once involved with a youth group when I was searching to make sense of–to use Douglas Adams’ words–life, the universe, and everything.* It was not, by the way, Campus Crusade for Christ, which was way too conservative. I have no idea if it’s still around and, if so, what it’s like now. Back then, though, CCC seemed more interested in condemnation than salvation. The 1970s and 80s were when TV evangelists sprouted like weeds: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Joel Osteen, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Lee Swaggert, Robert Tilton…. It didn’t require a college education to know that most were hucksters milking gullible cash cows to keep them in mansions, luxury cars, and (in some cases) hookers. There were also those like Hal Lindsey*, who were latter day Millerites predicting the apocalypse. I’m looking out my study window and can report that Earth is still here.

 

I don’t wish to tar every minister or person of faith with a brush of fraud. I’ve also known religious leaders who were the proverbial salt of the earth. I’m not Catholic, but I knew Father Mike of St. Michaels College in mid-80s and he’d get my vote for canonization. I won't embarrass locals I'd lump in the same camp. There is, however, a reason why movies like Elmer Gantry, Boy Erased, Frailty, Guyana, Jesus Camp, Leap of Faith, The Night of the Hunter, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Marjoe, The Master, The Magdalene Sisters, and scores more exist. And I’ve not even touched upon those blowing the lid off of hucksterism in other faiths. My standard comes from Mary Chapin Carpenter who reminds us: forgiveness doesn’t come with a debt.

 

It also doesn’t come with a complete disregard for human nature. Or reason. Millions of kids go through youth groups and hear messages akin to those of Charlie Kirk. As they age, most eventually go down a different path. Why? All the usual human reasons linked to ideals versus desire. Mainly they find an ascetic’s life too confining, either because it’s impractical or the messenger doesn’t practice what he preaches. To go back to John Prine, the disillusioned realize they need to work out things for themselves.

 

I don’t know how sincere Kirk was, but I know it’s stupid to kill people like him. Okay, my Quakerism says it’s stupid to kill anyone, but it’s wicked dumb to create martyrs or applaud murderers. Hucksters, fanatics, celebrities, and influencers feed off our oxygen. Ignore them. Turn off the TV, toss aside the paper, and try to find Jesus/Allah/Buddha/etc. on your own. Ditto music or clothing you like or a Democrat who can get elected. Okay, maybe the last one is far-fetched.  

 

* For the record, Prine was a serious Christian. Adams is the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sci-fi series. Lindsey (d. 2004) wrote The Late Great Planet Earth and numerous sequels.

Watching Over Her Imaginative and Moving

 

 

 

 

Watching Over Her (2023 in French, 2025 in English translation)

By Jean-Baptiste Andrea

Simon & Schuster, 584 pages.

★★★★★

 

Watching Over Her won a Prix Goncourt for the best and most imaginative work of the year when it was released in France in 2023. It has subsequently won other awards. English readers are now lucky enough to be able to read it, courtesy of an excellent translation by Frank Wynne. It is a long novel, but an amazing one that transports us to the early decades of the 20^th century.

 

It opens in an Italian monastery in 1986 with a man on his deathbed. He is Michelangelo Vitaliani, a dwarf whose name is nearly as long as he. Vialiani is Italian and made his reputation there, but he was born in France and, much to his chagrin, was often called “Il Francesa.” He called himself “Mimo,” partly to escape the burden of his first name. (That Michelangelo bore the surname Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni and since his death in 1564, has been considered as perhaps the greatest artistic talent of the Renaissance.) It was also Mimo’s fate to also be a sculptor.

 

At birth it wasn’t clear that he would much of anything. His family was mired in poverty, his mother was absent, and his father died of venereal disease contracted from a prostitute during World War I, and no other family member wanted Mimo. After all, who wants a dwarf? In the not-quite-modern world of 1916 Europe, folk tales held that dwarves were bad luck. His father left money for his upkeep, but his first “guardian” passed him on to another who put him to work as a stonecutter. One useful thing his father left him was an ability to carve stone and Mimo quickly surpassed the skills of his fellow workers and masters.

 

Watching Over Her often feels as if it were pulled from The Canterbury Tales. The “her” in the title is Viola Orsini, the bohemian daughter of a proud aristocratic family. They come to each other’s attention when Mimo and other members of “Uncle” Alberto’s crew are working on the Orsini estate. Alberto is not Mimo’s uncle, nor does his dwarfism repulse Viola, as she too is an outcast. As Mimo fashions things in stone, Viola takes it upon herself to fashion his intellect one book at a time. They rendezvous in a cemetery, as her parents would be appalled to see her spending time with a diminutive tradesman. Those meetings in the graveyard are the genesis of one of the oddest and most unpredictable relationships in recent literature. One could call it lovers-not-lovers.

 

Reversal of fortunes is a common literary trope, but that between the Orsinis and Mimo is akin to twin glass elevators, with that of the Orsinis descending as Mimo’s ascends. He soon does commissions for the Orsinis, sups at their table, and smokes Orsini cigars, but is never considered as match for Viola. Mimo also sculpts for the church, which makes him one of the most celebrated artists in all of Italy. That’s rather amusing, as Mimo is more sinner than saint. As his purse bulges, much within it is spent on drink and rental women, though he always yearns for the unattainable Viola. She, in turn, becomes a family pawn as she reaches marriageable age. Think of them as each other’s oddball guardian angel.

 

Do not, however, expect any old-fashioned happy ending. Where Waiting For Her departs from the aforementioned Canterbury Tales vibe is that the 1920s into the1940s are the age of Mussolini in Italy. How does a cash-poor noble family like the Orsinis respond to the often vulgar Il Duce? For that matter, what does a famous sculptor like Mimo do when fascists wish to employ him? To again reference Chaucer, Waiting for Her is also a morality play. If you will, events also tends to bring the glass elevators to the same level.

 

How many books hinge on how the promise of youth is sullied by adult realities? Author Jean-Baptiste Andrea has written something more complex, a novel of great humor, bridled passion, burning ambition, and deep sorrow. In this (sort of) love story, the question of who do you love stumbles over the query what do you love. 

 

#NetGalley 

#WaitingforHer 

 

Rob Weir

Note: This book is scheduled to release in February, but you might want to pre-order it now. It's an amazing work and rumors are that it will be available earlier.