Novel about Twain Speculates, but Perhaps Too Much

Twain's End  (2015)

Lynn Cullen

Threshold Books, 352 pages, #9781476758961

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This novel has the virtues and drawbacks of all literary imaginings involving famous people. Cullen strikes the right tone concerning Samuel Clemens' lonely final years–ones marked by misanthropy, crankiness, and disappearance into his created Mark Twain persona. The danger, though, lies in putting words into the mouths of historical personages, only some of which we know they actually said. The danger doubles when speculating on relationships for which there is, at best, fragmentary evidence.

Cullen imagines a fatal attraction between Clemens and his personal secretary, Isabel Van Kleek Lyon, who worked for him from 1902 into 1909. Cullen's is a fictional embellishment of work done by Karen Lystra in Dangerous Intimacy (2004) and Laura Skander Trembley in Mark Twain's Other Woman (2010). Each suggested the relationship between Lyon and Clemens might have crossed the line between flirtation and consummation. Both Lystra and Trembley are scholars constrained by evidence, hence they could only suggest; as a novelist, Cullen goes further and presents Lyon as Clemens' crutch, muse, and lover in his dotage. (Or, more accurately, a semi lover as he was 68 when his wife Livy died in 1904, and a less-than-virile 70 when Cullen places him in the arms of the then 42-year-old Lyon.)   

Here's what we know from the historical record: that Lyon called Clemens/Twain "The King" and was deeply infatuated with him. Whether his outsized persona so dazzled her that she also desired him physically is another matter altogether. Rumors of an affair circulated as early as 1906, when Lyon accompanied Twain to Bermuda, and resurfaced a year later when she went to England when Twain received an honorary doctorate from Oxford. Whispers that he planned to wed Ms. Lyon embarrassed Twain and probably led to tension that drove Lyon into the arms of Twain's business associate Ralph Ashcroft, whom she married in 1909. Cullen conveniently ignores pretty credible evidence that Lyon and Ashcroft enjoyed carnal relations in Twain's Redding, Connecticut home. She also ignores something else we know: that Lyon struggled with alcoholism.

 Again, we are back to the problem of biography versus literary imagination. Perhaps Twain and Lyon did have a fling or two, but at present the evidence is lacking. Many scholars (including myself) doubt anything happened beyond Clemens' known fascination with youth, pretty women, and flatterers; and I sincerely doubt any romantic attachment occurred while Olivia Clemens lived. Cullen is more convincing stripping the sheen off the Mark Twain image. As she—and biographers such as Michael Shelden–show, Clemens, who died in 1910, was an embittered man for the last decade of his life. He had reasons: his favorite daughter Susy's early death, Livy's frailty and passing, the egoism and recklessness of daughter Clara, and daughter Jean's epilepsy. (Jean drowned in her bathtub in 1909.) To the degree Clemens was ever happy, it was whilst holding court as Twain–and he vigorously protected what we'd today call the Twain "brand." Lyon definitely played a major role in burnishing that brand; in addition to her secretarial duties, she effectively ran the Clemens household from 1902 onward, right down to paying servants' wages, doling out allowances to Clara and Jean, acting as hostess for scores of visitors, and overseeing renovations to both Clemens' home and her own cottage on the grounds.

In the novel, Lyon is the book's Jane Eyre-like heroine, Clemens/Twain a vain egomaniac, and his daughter Clara a mash between Machiavelli, the Wicked Witch of the West, and a libidinous seductress of a married man. Cullen's other villainess is housekeeper Katy Leary, Clara's co-conspirator. She is right about Clara, Twain's only surviving offspring but hardly a credit to her parents or herself. Clara is almost certainly the one who orchestrated Clemens' decision to fire Lyon in 1909—ostensibly for theft, slander, and misuse of family funds, though there is not a scrap of evidence to suggest any of this. She likely had a hand in her father's 400+ page screed against Lyon, which included the charge that she was a conniving "slut." Of that remark, the first part is more convincing than the second. Lyon may well have flattered the aged Clemens in order to keep her comfortable position. She and Ashcroft may also have schemed to get a portion of his anticipated estate. (Clemens didn't encourage loyalty with the parsimonious wages he doled out.)

 By now you are aware that I've delved more into history than to Cullen's novel. Call it another hazard when fictionalizing someone as famed as Twain. As a novelist, Cullen must try to take us places we haven't already been, but there are places in which she transgresses the border between history and histrionics. Twain's End is a good read, but an uneven one that's best when Cullen sticks closer to the record and turns down the romantic steam–some of Lyon's swooning for Clemens is particularly over the top.   

Cullen gets so much of the general ambience of Twain's final years correct that the book makes for fascinating reading in that regard. She takes needed revisionist sandpapering to Twain's heroic sheen. Overall, I give Twain's End a qualified recommendation. If you choose to read it, it's best to adhere a sticky note to the cover that reminds: "This is a fictional work loosely based upon historical figures." Cullen has done her research; much of what she writes is plausible. But there's just no getting around the real person problem: novelists can speculate; a scholar can conclude only what evidence allows. Read Twain's End because it's an entertaining, but never forget that Cullen has filled in historical blanks with imagined answers.

Rob Weir

Growing Up Poor in America

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I recently posted a picture of where I grew up on Facebook—half of a cramped cinder block house with about as much insulation as the average butterfly. I noted that my childhood SES (socioeconomic status) was working-class poor. This prompted Heather, a friend and former student—how I love to type that phrase!—to comment that she knew what I meant, but that I probably wouldn't have been considered poor in China, where she has lived. 

 

Heather is absolutely right. Except, of course, we don't measure our wealth vis-à-vis the Chinese. Poverty is always relative. We measure ourselves by what we have, lack, or desire within the small circles in which we rotate, not those far away on this spinning planet of ours. Metaphorically speaking, we either are the Joneses, better than they, or envy them. Sadly, no matter how far down the pole we slide, there's always someone lurking below who envies what we have. As the old film The Gods Must Be Crazy humorously revealed, in a world of handmade tools, a Coke bottle makes you a king. 

Poverty can be parsed, and it also changes over time. My memories are of being poor in the 1950s and early 1960s. Let's call the Joneses "middle class." My family wasn't desperate; we were, if you will, the upper strata of the poor. But the Joneses certainly reminded us we weren't their equals. Here's what I recall:

Food: The middle class ate nutritious food and plenty of it; the desperate poor relied upon Salvation Army meals and government surplus food. In the days before food stamps, welfare was government-issued bags of dried beans, powdered milk, tins of corned beef (with congealed fat), and paving-stone slabs of American cheese. My family sometimes had to rely on these, but usually we were a small cut above in the "buy food and make it stretch" category of thin stews, macaroni-based casseroles, and Ramen noodles in salty broth. There were no elementary school hot-lunch programs,  so my two brothers and me walked to a neighbor's house at noon—both of my parents worked. She fed us toasted white-bread Velveeta sandwiches that sometimes contained a piece of fried Lebanon bologna. I later surmised the bologna added protein to our diet, as Velveeta has almost no nutritional value. (Look it up—in a kinder society it would be banned!) We seldom went hungry, but we seldom felt satisfied. Poor food is high in salt, fat, sugar, and filler powders, hence the great irony in America that those who have the worst access to food are often pudgy—like I was around 6^th grade.

Housing: Middle-class people owned their homes, we rented, and those even poorer lived in hellaciously awful "projects" run by slumlords. The local "project" was called Cardboard City, which should tell you all you need to know! But at least there weren't many homeless people in those days.  

Not enough money: For the middle class it meant they couldn't afford orthodontia*; for us it meant bills piled up, necessities were purchased on installment, and mom asked the landlord for a few weeks grace. The really poor moved a lot. (*To this day, you can tell the childhood SES of people over 50 by their dental work/non-work.)

Broken: The Joneses tossed it; we patched it. Torn jeans later became a grunge fashion statement, but for us it was reality. My first year of junior high school, I owned two pairs of school pants and when I burst the seat of one, it was sewn up the backside with heavy thread. No baseball bat was ever scrapped. If it split, we drilled screws into the barrel and taped it. Ditto baseballs, which were properly "tape balls."

Shoes: Middle-class kids had $10 Chuck Taylor Converse; we had sneakers from Endicott Johnson that were a buck a pair. And they came in colors that embarrassed the hell out of us: yellow, red, green, and bright blue. Yeah—those are cool now too. Not then! Like baseballs, sneakers didn't wear out until tape no longer held them together. Holes in the soles? Stuff cardboard inside and repeat as often as necessary. Pray for dry weather.

Desires: Instant gratification was for the Joneses. We got new stuff three times a year: Christmas, birthdays, and back-to-school sales. My parents were exceedingly generous and often did without to indulge me and my brothers, but the top three or so items on one's "dream" list were pretty much out of the question. A new bike was usually your brother's old bike. Really poor kids just walked.

Lessons: Middle-class kids had music, riding, sports, and dance lessons with private coaches. My world was public: school, playground, and ball fields, where I learned by observing. I learned to hit a curve ball by watching one of my not-so-bright friends repeatedly lean the wrong way and get hit by pitches. (I never did learn how to hit fastballs very well.) I also learned tennis  and guitar by watching. And, yes, I bought a Sears Silvertone on installment–one of the models not destined to become a collector's item.

Other Stuff: Middle-class kids wore fancy clothes and went to proms; we wore jeans to dances at the YMCA. Middle-class parents took showers before they went to work yet came home looking clean; ours took baths when they came home covered in grime. Middle-class kids went on vacations to exotic-sounding places; we went to Worcester to see my paternal relatives. Until I was 16, the most exotic place I had ever been was Atlantic City.

College: Guidance counselors assumed middle-class kids would go to college and that working-class kids might attend trade school (or enter the military) before entering the workforce. SES came into play even if you decided college sounded like a good idea. If you were rich, you looked at Penn. Middle-class kids went to Penn State, and my kind never bothered to think beyond a local state college. (No regrets—I got an amazing education at Shippensburg University, but I was stunned I was when my buddy John decided to go to whole way to Philadelphia to go to college.) Need I tell you that no guidance counselor ever advised me to go to college? (Fair enough—I had exactly the attitude toward them that they encouraged.)

I ask for no sympathy. Mine wasn't a Dickensian childhood—it was what I call a "paper cut" existence: small indignities that irritated and rubbed the wrong way. By the time the Sixties rolled around, it didn't bother me—partly because materialism was on the outs and people dressed worse than I by choice.  Poverty also stopped stinging when my friends and I reached our teen years, secured part-time jobs, and earned pocket change we spent on records, food, camping, and hanging out. Poverty taught me perseverance. I admired how much my mother did with so little. But I was always aware I wasn't a Jones.

Maybe I never will be. I've got plenty of dough now and, as an educator and writer who owns his own home, has cool toys (guitars, cameras, books, computers), and extensive travel under my belt, I'm objectively a member of the upper middle class. But I still don't understand middle-class people. They often seem vain and shallow. Mostly they seem selfish, heartless whiners who utter pious banalities, moan about their taxes, and hate the poor. They don't have the slightest idea of what poverty means. Just like I have no idea what it means to be poor in China, or be a slum dog in Kolkata. Like I said, poverty is always relative. But I still have a hard time equating a lack of orthodontia with deprivation.  

Rob Weir

Noah Gunderson: Carry the Ghost a Haunting Release

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NOAH GUNDERSON           

Carry the Ghost

Dualtone (2015)

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Here's a name to remember: Noah Gunderson. The Seattle-born Gunderson has been kicking around since 2008 and has a few EPs to his credit, plus Ledges, his 2014 full-length recording. If his second LP, Carry the Ghost, attracts the notice it deserves, folks across the continent will come to know this talented young singer songwriter. Gunderson claims Neil Young as his inspiration for Carry the Ghost, especially the rawness of Young's Tonight's the Night. The influences can definitely be heard on "Heartbreaker," a song whose emotional wallop is carried through a pain-laden voice atop a quiet guitar.  Also like Young, many of the songs are neither bitter nor sweet, rather something that lies within the seam between them. On "Jealous Love," Gunderson implores "I want it better than I've ever had," yet he dangles on a wobbling wire that makes us think it's not going to turn out that way. Another Neil Young trait is the way in which Gunderson lures us into thinking we're in for a quiet song and then cuts us with a hard edge. Gunderson's "Slow Dancer" opens with tristful piano and sad memories, and then adds percussion and electric guitar. It's not cacophonous, but the thicker mix adds fuel to lyrics such as "Light it up again, burn like a holy fire/Light me up again if it makes you feel free." Yep—a lot of these songs are what Gunderson calls "post-relationship" musings.

Having made the Neil Young comparison, though, don't see Noah Gunderson as a Neil-clone. He's a much better singer than Young and possesses a voice capable of climbing to the upper register, but adorned with controlled husk. The singer of whom he most reminds me is Ellis Paul, both in some of his vocal qualities and in his writing, a blend of the tender, the sad, and the introspective. I liked Carry the Ghost so much I checked out a few things from Ledges. "Guardian Angel" would certainly be at home in Paul's repertoire, especially in the way that Gunderson casts illusions with his voice. When you hear it the first time it sounds like poetry, but what you're hearing is the way Gunderson wrings suggestive meaning from relatively simple lyrics. Listening to Noah Gunderson is often like a fist in a velvet glove. Will it strike, or caress? Check out this lyric from "Bag of Glass": "In a bag of broken glass/It's not the parts of busted hope/It's the memories of then past." Noah Gunderson has earned his way onto my playlist. Make him part of yours as well.

Rob Weir

Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale a Moving Look at World War II France

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THE NIGHTINGALE  (2015)

Kristin Hannah

St. Martin's, 438 pages, #978-0312577223

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I didn't plan to read a lot of books about World War Two this year, but it was inevitable given that 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over fascism.  World War II is often dubbed the "good war," and it has also turned out to be a very good conflict for skilled novelists. Count Kristin Hannah among them. The Nightingale is set in Nazi-controlled France. (Note: France fell to Hitler's blitzkrieg in May of 1940. The northern part was directly controlled by Germany and was called Occupied France; the south—Provence and adjacent regions–was the "Free Zone," though the government in Vichy was only nominally governed by Marshal Pétain, who was little more than a Nazi puppet. In 1942, the Vichy fiction ended and Germany assumed direct control over the entire of France.)

The theme of Hannah's novel is nicely summed near the end when an elderly woman (one of our protagonists), recollects: "In love we find out who we want to be; in war, we find out who we are." The book centers on two sisters: married, cautious Vianne, who lives in the Loire Valley near the border of Occupied and Vichy France; and headstrong 18-year-old Isabel, whose greatest knack prior to the war involved being booted from a series of boarding schools that failed to make a young 'lady' of her. Isabel had the bad timing to wash out of her final school weeks before the Nazis arrived in Paris, where she   is living with her broken-down, widowed, and drink-prone father–a World War One hero who wants no part of sharing his living quarters, least of all with the outspoken Isabel, an omnipresent danger once Paris falls. Vianne doesn't want Isabel either–she's a village teacher trying to to feed her daughter, Sophie, while her husband is in a POW camp after the Fall of France. Even worse, Occupied France is subject to a quartering act and Vianne's home is one of those that must house Nazi officers.

Hannah builds on the time-honored sibling rivalry theme; at least on the surface, Isabel and Vianne are oil and water, with Isabel becoming the book's namesake "Nightingale," a secret Resistance operative who helps smuggle shot-down Allied pilots out of France and into Spain. The descriptions of her activities are page turning and harrowing; they are also totally believable as her character is modeled upon a real heroine: Belgium's Andrée de Jongh. In many ways, though, Vianne is the more complex character, as she must walk a tightrope whose terminus she cannot see. Can she trust Captain Beck, the first officer who billets in her house? He seems kind, but is he? Are his questions innocent, or sinister? Can she even respond to kindness without being viewed as a collaborator? Moreover, she's hemmed in by a dilemma that transcends war: to what lengths will/should a mother go to protect her child? How should she react when that child comes to admire her aunt's chutzpah over her mother's caution? Indeed, how does one explain to an elementary-aged child just what's happening in her nation and village?

That village, Carriveau (possibly real-life Touraine) is also central to the novel. Its border town setting means that Vianne's and Isabel's worlds will collide at some point. The decision is, as an old union song phrased it, which side are you on? Hannah's descriptions of Vianne working her way through moral dilemmas would do proud a modern values clarification expert. She also does a wonderful job of drawing out the tension and not resolving matters in easy or formulaic ways; in fact, we don't actually know how a lot of things are settled until near the end when we find ourselves in 1995.

Hannah has done her research well and presents a solid portrait of the French Underground, acts of everyday resistance on the part of non-combatants, and the confusion that French people must have felt in the countryside. In Paris and other cities, the Nazis were an impersonal and ever-present irritant; not so in rural France, where citizens had both more personal contact, yet less frequent dealings with their occupiers. Give Hannah credit also for delving into a shameful event the French have only recently confronted: the Rafle du Vélodrome d'Hiver. Shortly after the Vichy government was dissolved in 1942, more than 13,000 Jews–4,000 of whom were children–in the south of France were rounded up and placed in a cycling stadium until they were transported to prison camps. Few survived.*

The Nightingale is emotionally impactful, thrilling in its action scenes, and honestly ordinary is its depictions of everyday life and universal dilemmas. Add this one to your list.

Rob Weir

* The film Sarah's Key (2010) is a deeply moving take on the Vel d'Hiv (as it's usually called) roundup of Jews in Provence.

Musical Short Takes: Dan Bern, Eilen Jewell, Justin Earle, The Pollies

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Put Dan Bern in the category of singer songwriters for whom maturity has done a world of good. Bern's music falls into a seam that's somewhere between Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen by way of Billy Bragg. In the past, his love of irony has crossed the line that separates humor and egoism, but lately his voice, instrumentation, and lyrics have dialed back the snark. This has made him more accessible and his wry commentary more incisive. He is now on tour with a recent album, Hoody (www.danbern.comwww.danbern.com) that also features his recent drift toward a more country rock feel. Check out "Lifeline," a classic piece of honky tonk: "They say I've been carousing too much/Drinking like a sailor and smoking like a Dutch…."

            Bern's current tour only has a few Northeast stops: Northampton's Parlor Room on October 11, The Winery in New York City on October 14, and Club Passim in Cambridge, MA on October18. 

Eilen Jewell is also on the road with a recent record, Sundown Over Ghost Town (Signature Sounds). Jewell hails from Idaho, but she couldn't escape comparisons to Kentuckian Loretta Lynn even if she didn't do a lot of Lynn covers. You get that same mix of honky tonk, Western swing, and controlled twang. With Jewell, even her sweet songs are tinged with a little melancholy. Sundown Over Ghost Town is classic Jewell with a few small detours like "Rio Grande," whose Mexicana flair evokes a splash of Linda Ronstadt. One of the great joys of listening to Jewell is checking out of well she works with her band. The Lynn comparisons not withstanding, the guitar arrangements make you wonder if you're listening to country folk or surf music. But, heck, I'd love this new album even if it were only for a line in "Needle in Thread" where she describes her Idaho hometown as "one horse shy of a one-horse town."  I grew 2,300 miles east of her, but I know exactly what she means.

            You can sample Eilen Jewell here. 

Justin Townes Earle has a recent record titled Absent Fathers (Vagrant Records), which is intended as the companion piece to his 2014 Single Mothers and is available as double album in some formats (including LP). Earle knows whereof he speaks on both issues. He is the son of country music bad boy Steve Earle and his third (of seven!) wives, who raised Justin. Justin has had his own battles with drug addiction but seems to have gotten his life back on track. For those who don't know his music, his voice is a smoother counterpart to his old man's girt and gravel and, these days at least, he's more of an acoustic blues singer than country folk. In fact, "Farther From Me" is reminiscent of Van Morrison unplugged.

           Click here for some Justin Townes Earle track. s

Is there such a category as hard soft rock? If so, let me nominate The Pollies as an exemplar of it. They've just (as in days ago) released their second record, Not Here (Single Lock Records). They hail from Alabama and I've no idea where the band name comes from, so excuse me if I make an inappropriate Hollies remark because they do indeed sport some Hollies-like harmonies, though the band with which they most compare is My Morning Jacket. The album's theme is loss—usually lost love, though it opens with "Jackson," a paean to Jimmie Lee Jackson who, in 1965 was the Michael Brown of his day: an unarmed black man murdered by an Alabama state trooper. (His death sparked the famed Selma to Montgomery march.) Most of the rest of the CD is softer in content and, occasionally, in tone and mood. The Pollies are the kind of ensemble that prefers to knock you off your pins with a soft feather—as they do on quiet songs such as "Threw It Away" or "My Darling"–but can also amp up the pace when necessary. Check out "Lost," which simultaneously swells and rocks but with controlled aggression. Like I said, hard soft rock. 

            PS: On some websites the CD name is listed as Lost, but methinks that's wrong!

Rob Weir

Forgotten Films: Rosewater Reveals the True nature of Iran's Government

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ROSEWATER (2014)

Written and directed by Jon Stewart

Open Roads Films, 103 minutes, R (language, violence, suggestiveness)

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A lot of my liberal friends ask me why I oppose Obama's treaty with Iran. I tell them that Iran is a theocratic dictatorship that deserves global ostracism, not its stamp of legitimacy. But don't take my word for it; ask Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, who spent 118 days of torture, abuse, and deprivation in Iranian jails. Lucky for him he was a foreign national and a Newsweek correspondent, or he would have simply disappeared.

Bahari's Then They Came for Me is harrowing reading and if you don't want to read it, check out Jon Stewart's directorial debut film based upon Bahari's memoir. It is shot in documentary-meets-biography style. We watch as happy-go-lucky Bahari (Gael Garcia Bernal) lands in Tehran and visits his mother, then proceeds to do what good journalists do: seek out sources. He was in Tehran to report upon the protests surrounding the 2009 election-one blatantly stolen from the opposition so that brutal Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—the Persian Putin--could stay in power and do the mullahs' bidding. Bahari reported on the rumors, filmed the crackdown, and interviewed dissidents—the stuff journalists do. For this he was jailed as a spy and Zionist tool. We watch the effort to breakdown Bahari for propaganda purposes, mostly by an interrogator unsuccessfully playing the "good cop" role before turning Bahari over to the rough treatment boys. The first inquisitor is the film's titular Rosewater (Kim Bodnia); Bahari is always blindfolded and comes to identify his tormentor by scent long before he sees his face.

The prison scenes are predictably horrifying, especially in conveying a sense of isolation, as Bahari spent most of his time in solitary confinement. But Stewart throws in two twists—Bahari's imagined conversations with his father, who was imprisoned by the Shah; and with his sister, who ran afoul of Khomeini. The second twist is subtler and ultimately more powerful: Bahari's realization that his captors are both fascinated by the West and are as frightened by him as he is of them. That revelation was ultimately Bahari's soul- and mind-saving grace.

Stewart knows his way around the camera and uses light and angles effectively to build drama and set moods. The only self-reverential nod to The Daily Show is a brief segment in which Bahari agrees to a satirical interview with Jason Jones. Need I tell you that Iran's masters are not noted for their sense of humor? Stewart wisely abandons his TV rant style for a detached one that makes the Iranian government appear more ridiculous (and dangerous) than any contrived script could have done. Stewart's only slip-up lies in odd casting. Garcia Bernal is a fine actor capable of chameleon performances and he does his best in Rosewater. Still, Bernal is Mexican and aren't we decades past the days in which we don't "see" when someone is in ethnic drag? Good as Bernal was, there are numerous Iranian actors who would have been more appropriate choices (Ramin Korimloo, Asghar Farhadi, Shabab Hosseini…).

I'm at a loss to understand why this film bombed at the box office: just $3.1 million in receipts on a budget of over $5 million. Maybe Americans only want Jon Stewart to be funny, or maybe the bleak subject put them off. Or maybe they swallowed the same Kool-Aid that Obama drank. Iran's reaction to this film was to denounce Stewart as a Zionist CIA agent. Isn't that what they said about Bahari? The Shah… Khomeini… the mullahs… The more things change, the more they stay the same. Good on Jon Stewart for exposing the reality beneath the turbans.

  

If You Don't Vote for Bernie, You're on Your Own!

A Tale of Three Americas

I had a recent argument with a friend over politics. Don't worry—we're still friends. We both support Bernie Sanders–you know, that awful socialist who'd make all Americans share toothbrushes if elected. At least that's what people who don't know the difference between a socialist and a coconut would have you believe.

The debate was over what each of us will do if Bernie doesn't get the nomination and my friend insisted that I will go into the voting booth and put an X beside Hillary Clinton's name. I'll do it, he insisted, because the current crop of Republicans is so intrinsically crazy that a vote for Hillary would be the only way to fight the possibility of a GOP president. I agree that today's GOP is to the right of Mussolini. (Hey, even Mussolini cared about his nation's train system!) I think "crazy" might be too mild; "evil" is a better handle. What does it tell you when evangelicals endorse Donald Trump? It tells me that their pious rhetoric on morality is the biggest sham since Piltdown Man. It tells me they worship a god named Mammon, not one named Jehovah.

But I still won't vote for Hillary; I will write in "Bernard Sanders" on the ballot. I'm just not going to carry anyone else's cross any more. If women vote for the GOP, who am I to tell them they shouldn't sleep with the enemy? If Christians want to commit acts of blasphemy, it's not my job to save them from fiery perdition. And if working Americans once again vote against their self-interest, I'll be done explaining to them that their bosses are not their friends. But I'll try one last time.

Here's what I tell anyone who wants to know why it's Bernie or nobody for me. I've seen enough of America to say this: If you want to know what the economy would look like under Donald Trump, go to Atlantic City. If you want to know what it would look like under Hillary Clinton, visit a Wal-Mart.  I'm for Bernie because one of my favorite places in the world is Burlington, Vermont–a place whose transformation under a Sanders mayoralty I witnessed with my own eyes.

Donald Trump Prosperity

Donald Trump is a modern-day pirate, has the fashion sense to go with it, and economic theories rooted in the pirate ethos of raid and plunder. Stroll down Atlantic City's splintering Boardwalk and you'll see what happens when pirates sail away. Atlantic City's heyday was over before Trump arrived, but he proved you can get blood out of a turnip. Trump once owned three of Atlantic City's casinos; all of them have since been sold or closed. He took advantage of bankruptcy laws four times to stiff creditors, which means only the corporate entities lost money—not Trump personally. But you know what, even if he had lost some change, let's consider how The Donald makes his money: real estate and gambling. Both are high-risk ventures, but Trump seldom puts his own chips on the table. He develops, sells, and lets the buyers worry over whether they'll make back their investment. He arrives in places like Atlantic City—as godawful a burg as you'll ever want to be–lays on the bling and sells dreams of riches. Did you ever know of a poor man walking into a casino and exiting a millionaire? Casino operators are classic bottom-feeders selling fantasies dollar-by-dollar to those with little left to lose, but manage to do so anyhow. Don't take my word for it—go to the Casino State—sorry New Jersey–and report back on how casinos have revitalized Atlantic City, Camden, Pleasantville, and other Garden State locales. This is what Trumpeconomics looks like, folks.

Hillarynomics: Protest Outside of Bentonville HQ

Hillary Clinton was on the Wal-Mart board of directors for six years (1985-92) and would have been there longer if Bill hadn't charmed his way into the White House. Here's what she's said to date about efforts to unionize Wal-Mart: nada. There's no need to regale you with anti-Wal-Mart screeds; if you don't know the high cost of low prices by now you're simply not paying attention. But I will say that Bill & Hill made up the most powerful conservative presidency since Calvin Coolidge. Need a list? Here it is: NAFTA, Defense of Marriage Act, fast-track free trade deals, deregulation of the communications industry, the military's DADT policy, tightening welfare eligibility, spending cuts, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, the pardon of Marc Rich, relaxation of regulations at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…. Ronald Reagan couldn't have dreamed of such things! Can we just stop with the nonsense that Hillary would be a progressive force? Her economic vision is that of Chinese goods being sold to low-wage workers by low-wage workers. She's a pirate as well–just one whose baubles are made of plastic instead of gold. A Hillary presidency would look more like Maggie Thatcher's reign than the liberal regimes of Helen Clark, Johanna Sigurdardottir, or Julia Gillard.*

Burlington's vibrant Marketplace

This brings me to Bernie Sanders—that left-winger so many people fear. The one who took over a decaying city (Burlington) in 1981, put city services out to competitive bid, balanced the books, inspired the redevelopment of the city's waterfront, marshaled the completion of the city's vibrant downtown retail center, encouraged the development of the arts, negotiated with city workers as equals, brought minor league baseball to the city, prevented the conversion of working-class homes into luxury condos, and created a Community Economic Development Office. Under Sanders, millions of new dollars flowed into Burlington coffers. Some of this might have happened on its own, but Bernie was the catalyst. I was there; I watched Burlington go from seedy to trendy. Above all, I saw Bernie Sanders practice citizen-based democracy—not the politics of the one percent.

That's why he has my vote no matter how the primaries sugar off. If he's not on the ballot, I'll write in his name because, frankly, if it's the GOP versus Hillary, I will have lost all hope. At least I can have a clean conscience.  

* Helen Clark headed New Zealand's government from 1985-92; Sigurdardottir Iceland's from 2009-13; and Gillard Australia from 2010-13.