Wait for the Q-Tip and The Dump Truck Nightmare to End.

 It's the day after the election. I have spent the last two days in a (mostly effective) all media blackout. I had voted. I had donated to my candidates of choice- there was nothing to be seriously gained by obsessing over every tiny morsel of information scattered like birdseed along a trail.  Trump did much better than the polls expected. The fucking senate, and most of those candidates of choices failed miserably, and America proved itself to be 48.5% racist misanthropes bent on revenge against science and education that they perceived to keep them and their ignorance pinned to the ground. No winner was declared election night. I went to bed feeling physically sick- I had been so sure that Biden would deliver us from the Tangerine antichrist resoundingly and with extreme prejudice. It wasn't to be. Today it looked like he was inching towards the most razor sharp of victories. As I write this, it still isn't over. Trump is hysterically pulling all kinds of shenanigans, but Biden only needs Nevada, where he presently leads to win. No one feels secure in any of this. It's clear that polling no longer works. It's clear that people like the turd more than they are willing to say out loud to a call center pollster. I am still hopeful.

I was hopeful in 2000, 2004 and 2016 too, look what that got us.

I had fitful fever dreams last night, waking up often with an incongruous image that I was unable to quit: that of a plastic bag of orange liquid that was somehow grafted to my audio cart- they were one and the same- but they couldn't be- they had to be separated. It was like forging an alternate reality to do so, and I kept returning to the image, which made no logical sense, over and over until I felt nauseous. It reminded me of a recurring dream I had as a child, a nightmare. In the dream there was a huge dump truck and in it's bed was a single tiny Q-tip, except the Q-tip, regardless of it's small size, totally filled the truck to capacity. I could not break free of the strange discord of the abstract idea that the truck could be full of something so tiny. I remember waking up in a frenzy after dreaming this. As an adult I have thought of finding a dump truck and putting a Q-tip in it to stop the image's power- I feel anxious writing this, thinking about it. I think

Trump is the Q-tip  

Tales of Ancestral Whiteness

While in semi-quarantine, I was looking for diversions. As a European American, one such time killer is the genetic lost and found bin of Ancestry.com.  I have found generations of people unknown to me- mostly sturdy New Englanders of English and Scottish stock, Germans from where my surname comes, the random Swede or Irish woman- pretty common for a white guy in America. 

I found with some happiness, the scanned last will and testament of Captain Joseph Israel, veteran of the revolutionary war and my 6th great grandfather. It was fascinating to try and decipher the old script of the will, imagining the people it mentioned and the life it was wrapping up neatly, and then I saw it: a passage dealing with the dispersal of his slaves. Full stop. Long pause. Uncomfortable vague sadness. Joseph Israel’s wife was to select three enslaved people of her choosing and SELL the rest. The passage stopped me in my tracks.  Not only was he a slave holder, he had multiple slaves, they were a reasonably large percentage of his estate. I didn’t want to read anymore. I had never entertained the idea that any of my ancestors could have been part of the crime of holding humans as property. This revelation came just days before the George Floyd protests took Covid19 off the headlines. This genetic indictment was a secret, or felt like it. 

Joseph Israel, hero of the revolutionary war, was the son of Midrach ( Later ‘Michael’) Israel. Michael Israel (my 7th great grandfather) was  the owner of “The Blue Lion”  tavern  in Philadelphia. He was born a Jew, and so had to purchase naturalized citizenship in the British Empire, a country he was born in, because he was not a Christian. Michael converted to Christianity upon his marriage to an English woman, but retained his identity to some degree, a Hebrew bible being his prized possession in his probate inventory, also provided by Ancestry.com. Michael, being a Jew, it would seem is my only genetic connection to being the “other” in a homogeneous society. Y ou would think that his son Joseph might have seen parallels in the plight of the African, but I suppose that expecting someone to be woke in the 18th century just because it would make you  more comfortable is possibly too much to ask. What had the fortune he left to his wife contributed to my life? His son, Issac Israel, who’s imposing and handsome portrait hung over our piano in my childhood home- surely his life was vastly improved by the sale of those humans and the echo effect was felt generations later by my father’s family, and my own. The realization shamed me.

I found examples in my wife’s family as well, albeit, very different for one reason. Her family, who are descendent from Dutch colonists of the East Indies- Indonesia, it would seem owned native Indonesians. The big difference is that 90% of the Dutch subjects in Indonesia by the time they left in 1946 were also part Indonesian, and had been for generations- the oppressed had become genetically infused into the oppressor. I think that is a very different from the American experience.

As the Black Lives Matter protests swelled in Seattle and around the country , I felt the shame and pull of regret from inside my privileged ivory tower. I am not my ancestor but I recognize his long term effect on my life, and that of my country.

Black Lives Matter and we must change the narritive.

"the William Neff Memorial Grotto"

It's hard to know what to say about some one who inspired you, encouraged you (but never flattered you)when you never quite delivered the career or body of work they felt you could have achieved.  Good-Bye? Thanks? I wish I could have dedicated that imaginary oscar to you Bill? Bill Neff was one of my Film and TV professors at Montana State.  Of my big three Cinema teachers (the others being Jack Stonell and Salah Sayed- Ahmed) I was probably closest to Bill, who was my advisor and more importantly  the script writing professor. Bill had a standing friday afternoon drinking club at Stromboli's in Bozeman. It was F.A.T. Club  (Friday Afternoon Talk).  Those were some of the best memories I have of college, maybe of life. I made great friends at MSU and those teachers will always occupy my thoughts.  Jack was the straight man (though, he probably thought himself otherwise)- All-American and filled with nostalgic patriotism but also a pretty stand up guy and dad figure. Salah was the hero, the cinematography professor from Cairo, who worked with legendary directors and wooed starlets in the 40's and 50's. But Bill was the NYC realist and feisty little guy who would poke his finger in your chest and tell you "you can do better than this. You got something here and you should do something with it." His film classes opened my mind and my heart. His film appreciation course introduced me to many films that I now love and define me. Bill's office in the then new Visual Communications Building was on the ground floor and faced out to some fairly drab landscaping. One night we all went on a scavenger hunt for lawn ornaments and decorated outside his window- gnomes, flamingoes ,various knick knacks showed up. We called it "the William Neff Memorial Grotto" He thought it was hilarious. He got the janitor to illegally open our lockers so he could stuff all the gnomes and flamingos inside. He also made us take them all back to their owners.

My friend Kent reminded me that he saw Bill cry at the dedication at the end of "Raging Bull" - A dedication to his own cinema teacher at NYU:


"So, for the second time, [the Pharisees]
summoned the man who had been blind and said:
'Speak the truth before God. We know this fellow is a sinner.'
'Whether or not he is a sinner, I do not know,'
the man replied. 'All I know is this:
once I was blind and now I can see.'"

John IX. 24-26
the New English Bible

Remembering Haig P. Manoogian, teacher.
May 23, 1916 - May 26, 1980"
It's our turn now to remember those who helped make us who we are.

Like everything it seems today, Bill is gone. He died March 18th at the age of 90. Jack and Salah are gone too.

I miss you Bill even though it has been 10 years since I last saw you. I miss you like I miss my own youth. When the future still looked open and possible.

Good bye. Thanks.

Negative Inertia

It's way easier to not do anything. This must be how people fall off the grid, wind up with drug problems or become homeless due to laziness. I hate it. I could go up to my sumptuously appointed studio and paint but the required initiative seems beyond my indulged Netflix and oreo addled mind. My kids, also stuck at home in fear of plague, are likewise blob like creations. Laurie at least can work from home giving her life some structure. This is going to be a long lockdown.

Quarantine

Stuck at home while the angel of death awakens, has a cup of coffee and gets ready to exterminate the species.

We are not leaving the house, except to work in the garden and take walks. Watching the case numbers and fatalities rise. The West Seattle bridge is now shut down, so we can't even escape, as if there were a place to go. We escape through TV.


This is not normal.


I would paint lamb's blood over the door but I am vegetarian .

What I said for my sweet mother in law, Reny

On March 5th, 2020, Reny's memorial was to be held at her church in Kirkland, only a couple miles from the Covid19 ground zero. The funeral was officially cancelled but the mass was to be celebrated anyway for the family. Some die hard catholics attended, but this or an approximation, was said to a mostly empty sanctuary. Reny deserved better. We all deserved better.

Hi- I am Jim, I am married to Laurie, Reny Enkelken Maassen was my mother in law.  I love Reny Maassen and I am not sad. I know where she is. She was more like my second mom, she was a wonderful person. Meeting Jules and Reny for the first time about 37 years ago, I only remember being nervous and that the house in Redmond was so quiet. I am pretty sure we drank tea. As she sized me up, a gangly kid batting out of his league, as a new suitor for her daughter I could tell she was a force to be reckoned with.  I guess I passed, or at least didn’t fail too miserably. Reny had a very formal side that masked the kind and gentle person beneath. That facade could be formidable, (at least to a 22 year old boyfriend of her daughter) but it wasn’t really her. As I got to know her and after a short while started calling her “mom”,  and  I found out about the struggles of her childhood during the war in Indonesia, her family’s departure for Europe, her years in Holland and her immigration with Jules to the relative safety and security of  Fort Wayne Indiana, the loss of a child, only then some of the wall she built seemed to make sense.

       She was accustomed to in charge and to be right. Over our many years in discussion, never do I remember changing her mind on an issue. She changed mine on a few, and I have reason to believe that I may have caused her to reconsider, but her opinion rarely wavered in our conversations. It wasn’t boastful or know it all- it was just a physical law of the universe. Sometimes I thought there was a loneliness in that certainty, as long as there was Jules it never fully showed itself. When Jules left us, I was sure of it. But don’t think that made her cold because I would never see her in that way. Reny loved her family- her children, her grandchildren, but sometimes at an arms length. She was not the type of grandmother who showered people with affection- not that it wasn’t there, but in her reserved nature, she expressed it in different ways. She was not a Disneyland and cheetos kind of mom. She was a mom who instilled in her children an unambiguous christian faith and set of values that were clear and ever present. 

Her relationship with Jules, through all the years and hardships and joys that any marriage endures  was a great comfort to them both. With that example, it’s easy to see why all four of their children have had such successful long term relationships- all four have marriages of over 30 years- thats over 120 years. I guess thats something to be proud of. Mom missed Dad terribly after he left us. A light went out. While I do not doubt for a minute her certainty that they would be together again, I know she deeply missed Jules’ physical presence in their lives. It hurt to see.

         What will I remember about Reny. One thing is her skill with a hard boiled egg. The Maassen’s have an easter tradition that I had never seen before I was allowed into their family; the easter egg fights. It was pretty simple - at the post church brunch table, take the traditional dyed hardboiled easter egg and each person chooses an egg, and two people square off and and smash their eggs into each other. The winner- with the uncracked egg moves on. The loser eats a hard boiled egg and watches glumly from the sidelines. It is sort of a double elimination two tiered collegiate level final four match to determine egg fight champion of the year. For being such quiet people, these Dutch folk take this seriously, and nobody brought their A game more than Reny. In thirty or so years of egg fights, she won, I would guess, twenty of them. It got so I thought she had a pastel colored egg shaped piece of granite that she would sneak into the match, but it was just skill. If she had a jersey number for egg fights, we would retire it.

I miss Reny.  She was my last parent, and I really felt about her like my own mom. Being accepted into her family will always be one of my greatest joy. I love you mom. See you down the road.