JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 19, 2022

You Can’t Beat Haydn…

Once upon a time, in what seems like a galaxy faraway, I was living the perfect life. Perfect wife. Three perfect children. East Coast boarding schools. A mountain house near Sun Valley. A large manicured lawn. My own tennis court. A large clear-redwood deck. Flying for Pan Am. Commuting to Europe. A month on. A month off. Berlin-based. In and out of European capitals. A classic high-ceilinged Alt-Bau apartment on the edge of the Grunewald. Training for marathons.

And then one day the perfect life ended… I came down with a neuromuscular disease. Symptoms included double vision, drooping eyelids, legs too weak to climb into a van, and jaw muscles too weak to bite into an apple. Then my sick pay ran out, income went to half, Pan Am went bankrupt, income went to zero, and I lost most of my pension.

But, this isn’t about me. It’s a story is about Haydn – sort of. One of my favorite writers, Tim Cahill, describes the arc of a good story as “set up, set up, walk off” That stuff about me is the first set up. What comes next is the second set up. Then comes the walk off.

Second set up… Things went from perfect to imperfect. Marathon training ceased and I traveled from hospital to hospital – San Francisco, Ketchum, Palo Alto, Boise, – as science was applied to the problem. What went wrong with my perfectly healthy body? Was there a diagnosis? Would there be a treatment plan?

So many changes. I couldn’t read because of the eye problems, couldn’t do much but listen to books on tape, sleep, and eat soft food. But, there’s a hero or heroine in every good story, and in this one it was the perfect wife who dropped her artist/painter gig to become caregiver, income provider, travel companion, long distance mother, cook, housekeeper, and medical escort. She left her studio for a cocktail waitress job in a Ketchum bar before tucking me in for the night. And she did it all without complaint.

But there was a bright spot even in that dark universe. Before all the medical chaos and family upheaval, the best art gallery in Ketchum had booked her for a one-woman show. Fortunately, the work was complete and all she had to do was show up on opening night. And so, on the appointed night she loaded me in the van and we headed to town.

It was a summer night, warm and light at 8pm on the western edge of the Mountain Time Zone. The doors of the gallery were open. The art crowd was strolling in and out as we approached, and we could hear chamber music coming from inside. The guests were milling about, and the perfect wife’s large encaustic paintings looked wonderful on those big white walls.

She was surrounded and engaged when we walked in. Someone got a chair for me, and placed it against the wall next to the musicians. They were an all-female string quartet– two violins, a viola, and cello – from the Boise State College music department and sounded celestial.

It was my first outing and it felt good despite the limitations. I was carried away by the music – just what I needed. The quartet itself was tight and lively, and at the end of one number I thanked and complemented the leader. She looked at me with a smile and said, “You can’t beat Haydn.” I banked that one and it’s been a mantra of mine ever since. You, definitely, can’t beat Haydn. It was a good night for me, and on top of that the perfect wife/artist sold two paintings.

My medical problem turned out to be myasthenia gravis (MG), a neuromuscular disease something like multiple sclerosis (MS) but un-alike in that it is not progressive. With MG the muscles don’t fire because the nerve’s message doesn’t get to them. It’s an enzyme problem. No enzyme. No muscle action. It was my second time around, but the first episode, lucky for me, was mild and misdiagnosed. If it had been properly diagnosed, I would never have been able to get my commercial pilot’s license back or the 16 additional years in the cockpit.

The good news – and there is good news – is that my symptoms began to remit after a year. Double remissions are rare, so this was especially good news. Three years later, I was able to take the eye patch off without double vision. By then, the perfect wife and I owned a moderately successful Italian bistro in Ketchum. The day I showed up at work without the patch, one of our customers suggested I put it back on. He told me I looked much more interesting the day before and should keep wearing it whether I needed it or not.

Ready for the walk-off?

In my current galaxy, life is imperfectly perfect again. The MG is in complete remission, and I feel lucky to wake up every morning and find myself alive. I have a different perfect wife now (another story for another time), but my three perfect children are all grown and perfectly functional. The mountain house, tennis court, Berlin apartment and airline job are long gone, but there have been other interesting houses, tennis clubs, and jobs.

These days, in our perfect apartment on beautiful Lake Washington, I get up before the perfect wife does, walk to the kitchen, turn on the espresso maker, and ask Alexa to play some Haydn chamber music. And, as I do, I never fail to think of the first violinist and that night in the gallery. She was so right. “You can’t beat Haydn.”

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Categories : Art, Friendship, Music, Personal/Family, Travel, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 15, 2022

· 18 Comments

Thoughts on Holy Week…

At one time I considered myself a seeker. In college I had a split major in English and Philosophy, and during that period I dipped my toe in the waters of youth group born-again evangelism. It didn’t last long. I found the waters contaminated, but it was a stage in my spiritual life.

Buddhism also piqued my curiosity as a young man, but I found sitting “lotus” was so uncomfortable my efforts to reach a higher state of being was doomed. I continue to admire its principles but I dropped the practice.

Later, in middle age the search led me to the smells and bells of Episcopalian ritual. “Peace be with you.” That stage lasted longer, but I quit the institutional observation when the homophobic parish vestry expelled the gay Dean on trumped up charges of fiscal mismanagement. Once again the religious was contaminated by human interference.

As a writer, I love a good story, and Christ’s story one of the most imaginative and compelling ever written. At the risk of a lightning strike and choosing to ignore Pascal’s wager, I am no longer an observant Christian. But once in the fold, it’s hard to not wait for it “to come around on the guitar” as Arlo Guthrie says.

This is Holy Week. Palm Sunday. Spy Wednesday. Maundy Thursday. Good Friday. Holy Saturday. And, Easter. You may not be tuned in to the calendar dates, but it’s hard to miss the other things. Colored eggs. Lilies. Puffed up advertising sections. Bonnets? Easter dinners. And today, on Good Friday, a black draped cross to remind us that a Jew was murdered on a god-forsaken Palestinian hill in old Jerusalem.

So, what is this blog about? In the middle of Holy Week, I’m going back to the well looking for something or somebody to admire in honor of the calendar celebration. It’s hard. With the unseemly conflation of politics and religion in America, my gut is predisposed to cast them all out. Yes, there are still some notable Christians who live lives that honor His life.

To be clear, this is not about politics and religion. This is about three Christians I’ve singled out to celebrate. And, who are these three designated hitters? One is a writer. One a comedian. And, one is the head of the Catholic Church. I know I could have found more, but for this purpose three is plenty.

Last week, Ann Lamott wrote about her upcoming 68th birthday (April 13). If you don’t know her, Ms. Lamott is a crazy funny, deep thinking, teacher, and original writer who also happens to be a divorced mother, recovering alcoholic, and born-again Christian. It’s not because she’s a Christian that I admire her. It’s the fact that she lives like I imagine Jesus wanted all of us to live – with concern for others, a heart full of forgiveness, and a giant sense of humor. Here’s what she wrote about her birthday:

So Sunday I will celebrate the absolutely astonishing miracle that I, specifically, was even born. As Fredrick Buechner wrote, “The grace of God means something like, “Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you.” I will celebrate that I have shelter and friends and warm socks and feet to put in them, and that God or Gus found a way to turn the madness and shame of my addiction into grace, I’ll shake my head with wonder, which I do more and more as I age, at all the beauty that is left and all that still works after so much has been taken away. So celebrate with me. Step outside and let your mouth drop open. Feed the poor with me, locally or, if you want to buy me something, make a donation to UNICEF. My party will not be the same without you.

I could write more about Ann Lamott’s impact on my life and writing, but this is about three people, who happen to be Christians, not just one.

Number two is the comedian, Stephen Colbert. He is a master at improvisation, and though I take issue with the way he stereotypes older people, I believe he is the real deal in living his Christian beliefs. Stephen, the youngest of eleven children, was born into a Catholic family but lost his father and two siblings in an Eastern Airlines plane crash when he was 10. “In interviews, Colbert has described his parents as devout people who also strongly valued intellectualism and taught their children it was possible to question the church, and still be Catholic.” (Wikipedia). But, the personal tragedy did not destroy his faith. He made peace with it and continued to live it.

What I admire about Lamott and Colbert is not their Christian belief but their willingness to speak openly about its importance when association with religion has become toxic and partisan, more a political than spiritual act. I know both have strong political views but neither wears their faith as a badge of right-thinking and virtue. Faith, for them, is a personal moral compass.

Number three is Pope Francis who unlike the other two is a true spiritual leader. Widely regarded as a placeholder when he was elected. He was a compromise between the conservative and liberal wings of the College of Cardinals, and at 74 no one expected him to have a long papacy. But, he has endured and because of his longer tenure has changed our perception of the Holy Father.

As the first Jesuit Pope, Francis has chosen to eschew the luxurious trappings and privileges of his exalted position to model the simple life Jesus advocated for the 1.2 billion Catholics who look to him for guidance. I know it annoys those Cardinals who feel they’re entitled, but there are no more convoys of Mercedes limos conspicuously arriving in St. Peter’s Square these days.

For what it’s worth, Francis and I were born on the same day, December 17th, one year apart. I defer to him in all matters spiritual, and for many reasons, spiritual and temporal, I hope he lives forever and that it trends down.

M and I lived just a few blocks from the Vatican in 2016 and stood in the square beneath his apartment window one Sunday morning to hear him address the crowd. It felt then that we were in the presence of a humble servant of God. We weren’t there for spiritual nourishment, but a little of that came with the experience.

So, these are the thoughts triggered this Holy Week. Today is Good Friday, the day an innocent man was crucified by a political hack who lacked courage and caved to a bunch of fearful partisans who saw him as a threat. Yes, the cross will be draped in black to remind us of another day when courage was conspicuous by its absence. I will also be remembering these three admirable beings who walk the walk today while maintaining their deeply creative senses of humor.

Categories : Art, Ethics, News and Media, Personal/Family, Uncategorized, Writing

Posted by jdbernard743

· March 30, 2022

· 2 Comments

Once Upon a Time…

Many years ago, Joe Biden and Clarence Thomas were above-the-fold front page news. Thomas was accused of behavior unbefitting a Supreme Court nominee. It was a political sideshow. Thomas called it a “high tech lynching.” Democrats called him unfit. The woman accuser was sacrificed on the alter of expediency, and Thomas was confirmed by a Senate vote of 52-48.

Today Biden and Thomas are back in the headlines, Biden as POTUS and Thomas as the Supreme Court’s senior Justice. And once again, Thomas is at the center of a political firestorm regarding his fitness to serve.

This time a different woman is sharing the headlines. Now, it’s his wife Virginia, aka Ginni, who has brought the matter forward. Documents reveal that following the November 2020 election, Mrs. Thomas, an ultra-conservative operative, was actively strategizing with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to overturn the election and reinstate Donald Trump as president.

In July 2021, a House Select Committee was appointed to investigate the causes and events surrounding the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. As part of the investigation, Meadows was instructed to appear and produce documents associated with his tenure. He refused and the case went to the Supreme Court. The court ruled in favor of the committee with Thomas as the lone dissenter.

This week it was revealed that the documents requested include 29 text messages exchanged between Thomas’ wife and Meadows. Sitting in judgment on that matter was a clear conflict of interest.

Most legal scholars agree Justice Thomas should have recused himself from consideration of that case and all subsequent cases involving events related to the insurrection. Unfortunately, while lower courts have rules governing conflict of interest recusals, the Supreme Court’s rules are vague and rely on the justices to police their own involvement. So far, Justice Thomas has remained silent on the matter of recusal.

We didn’t know when the case went up to the Supremes that her texts to the White House were included in the requested documents—but he did. Now that we know, should Chief Justice Roberts allow him to give a single-digit finger to the way justice is delivered on his court?

With changes in the composition of the court, Associate Justice Thomas has recently come into his own. When Justice Scalia was asked to compare his jurisprudence with Thomas’ he said, “I’m an originalist but I’m not a nut.” He has gone from being mocked and marginalized to mainstream. The justice who once went more than 10 years without asking a question during oral argument is suddenly positively garrulous. Scalia, the dominant conservative voice is gone. RBG the dominant liberal voice is gone. Anthony Kennedy the often-decisive vote is gone, and three very conservative justices appointed by Donald Trump have successfully tipped the scales in Thomas’ favor.

Time and the court, now unbalanced with a 6-3 tilt to the right, has given him power he never imagined he would have. For years his dissenting opinions were peppered with grievance and his jurisprudence widely seen as a way to strike back at those who opposed his nomination. In the last two years he has turned the tables and embraced his new role. As the senior conservative justice side, he is the one who assigns opinions when his side is in the majority.

In an era when norms have been obliterated in government and governance, Thomas is breaking new ground. For more than 230 years we believed in the blind woman holding the balanced scales of justice as the symbol of judicial impartiality. We no longer do. According to February 2022 Gallup Poll, only 40% of adult Americans have a favorable view and believe in the impartiality of the Supreme Court.

Court watchers lament the passing of the once widely held belief that politics should play no part in jurisprudence. In September of 2021, before he announced his upcoming retirement, Justice Stephen Breyer published a small book entitled The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics in which he defended the Supreme Court’s apolitical character, a defense that has been soundly criticized as condescending, naïve, and blind to reality. Lawrence Tribe, the Harvard Professor Emeritus and dean of American constitutional scholars who admires Breyer’s jurisprudence has called the book a “self-serving series of what can only be called platitudes.”

I agree. We can’t ignore reality and pretend the current court is apolitical. Supreme Court appointments are cyclical and, if history is any guide, it is likely the pendulum will swing back. In the meantime we can at least demand ethical behavior and well reasoned decisions from the sitting justices.

Recent decisions on voting rights, gerrymandering, restrictions on abortion, Trump administration policies, and Covid mandates – all delivered in unsigned “shadow docket” rulings without full hearings, briefs, or oral argument further undermine respect for the court and its authority.

Polls show that most Americans want assurance that we are governed by the rule of law. We may not like the way the court disposes of cases, but we believe the system is inherently good. We want honesty, fairness, and equity in all areas of our lives.

Some believe that expanding the number of justices or imposing term limits on their tenure, will rebalance the court, but neither is likely to “fix” what’s wrong. Court appointments have always had a political component, but since the days of the liberal Warren court, presidential appointments have become more partisan and the composition determined by deaths, retirements, and opportunities given the sitting president to fill the seat. No one could have predicted that Donald Trump would be able to nominate three justices and totally tip the scales to the conservatives.

Will it take another World War to unite us? Today our support for the people of Ukraine is uniting us in support of a sovereign democratic nation under attack. The confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to fill the Supreme Court’s open seat is another opportunity for Senators to cross political lines and help restore the court’s reputation.

We can’t let Clarence and Ginni Thomas or the alt-right further denigrate our institutions. There are not two sides to this argument. The Supreme Court deserves our respect, but it needs to be earned. Justice Thomas and the Machiavellian machinations of Senator McConnell have undermined America’s confidence in the even-handed administration of justice. Restoring confidence in the Court will not come quickly. There is no quick fix.

In a recent Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of my law school alma mater, encouraged law students and their teachers to have faith that the Supreme Court can regain the respect for precedent and approach to the law it once had. “There really are just two choices: Give up or fight harder, even if there will be losses along the way. If we can instill in students a desire to defend justice, even if victory is distant, it will be a good semester, no matter what the Supreme Court decides.”

Categories : Books, Ethics, News and Media, Politics, Writing

Posted by jdbernard743

· February 6, 2022

· 4 Comments

Teaching the Truth…

Several high profile lightweights are throwing their weight around these days. A podcaster, a primetime “influencer”, the son of a dead president’s dead brother, and a scraggly bearded QB who misled teammates and the NFL about his vaccine status. All have contributed to the spread of misinformation and the disgraceful manipulation of audiences hungry for the truth in these perilous times.

Yes, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr. and Aaron Rogers are pedaling misinformation about the efficacy of the coronavirus vaccine. Never-mind them. Forget Spotify, Fox News, and other fringe podcasts. Something even more dangerous is happening at school board meetings across the country. It’s about books. It’s about teachers. It’s about parental and social responsibility.

Puritanical reactionaries determined to keep controversial information from their children have always worked the edges of our educational system. In the 1920s they focused on sex, reproduction, and language. The U.S. Post Office banned books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Ulysses, and Henry Miller’s novels because they were determined to be “obscene.”

In 1960, Tulsa, Oklahoma school administrators fired an English teacher for assigning Catcher in the Rye to his 11^th-grade class because it contained “vulgar language”. In Columbus, Ohio a teacher deemed the Salinger novel “anti-white” and school administrators banned it.

Last month, in King County where I live, a principal removed three YA (young adult) LGBTQ+ books purchased by her Middle School librarian because of “sex, profanity, and obscenity not appropriate.” Now, parents in the district are inventorying all the library shelves looking for other objectionable material. But…it gets worse.

While puritanical elements may still want to shield their children from the facts of life, the focus has recently turned from sex to history – particularly teaching them about America’s racial history. Gone are the days when textbooks got away with burnishing the reputation of the Founding Fathers by lauding the “all men are created equal” language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution’s “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Today we know that most of the founders were slaveowners, that only white property owners were allowed to vote, and “the people” did not include women or people of color.

These are the facts, not alternative facts, but irrefutable facts. This is our history. Those who want to hide the truth are crusading against what they disdainfully call CRT, Critical Race Theory, as if it were a theory and not historical fact. Much of the attention is the result of a New York Times initiative called The 1619 Project, a series of 19 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America.

Slavery has always been near the center of our national narrative. It arrived on our shores 400 years ago. Can we ignore it? Should we not talk about it? Should we not teach our children about it? Apparently, many Americans think so. There is a growing movement at the local school and school board level to keep that part of American history out of the classroom.

When I lived in Berlin in the 70s and 80s, German schools conveniently ran out of time to teach the Nazi period near the end of every school year. That’s changed in Germany, but today CRT is front and center in American curriculum debates.

In the 1930s the Nazis burned books they thought objectionable. Four days ago, a Tennessee pastor live streamed the burning of the Harry Potter and Twilight series of books on Facebook, and last month another Tennessee school district banned the Holocaust-based graphic novel, Maus. This didn’t happen in Nazi Germany. It happened right here in the United States of America. Reverend Gary Locke promised “We have stuff coming in from all over that we will be burning. We’re not playing games. Witchcraft and accursed things must go.”

Is Tennessee an outlier in the book banning schemata? It isn’t. It’s part of a larger effort to control the narrative and teaching of American history. In recent years school districts from California to Mississippi have banned Harper Lee’s 1961 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, because “of racist slurs and their negative effect on students” and for “featuring a ‘white’ savior character.” This would have been unimaginable 20 years ago.

Book banning and book burning have, like the phoenix, risen from the ashes as have white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and anti-Asian sentiment. I want to be clear; I don’t like the junk science that Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham are pedaling, but their misinformation is a petty threat compared to purging our libraries of quality fiction and well-researched historical scholarship. Education is the key to our survival. We need to hold the line and push back. We should never block access to established and evidentiary truth. We need to educate our children and grandchildren – not hide the truth from them. We need to stand up for the truth. It will set us free.

Categories : Books, Ethics, News and Media, Politics, Uncategorized, Writing, Writing

Posted by jdbernard743

· January 27, 2022

· 2 Comments

C’mon, Stop Pimping Your Elders…

I have an abiding dislike for people who make fun of others. I never liked Don Rickles whose act was an avalanche of insults, or Donald Trump who chooses to demean or slander those he disagrees with rather than engage them in debate. Remember Crooked Hillary, Little Marco, Sleepy Joe, Crazy Megyn, Pocahontas, or the disabled New York Times journalist he mocked.

Lately it’s Stephen Colbert, one of my favorite comedians, who is getting under my skin. He does an impersonation of Joe Biden that’s not about his politics. He’s mocking Joe’s affect as an out of touch old person.

Yes, sometimes he tries too hard to be au courant and relies on out of date reference. And there are too many instances of “hey, man.” Too many “malarky’s.” Too many “Barack and me” references. But Colbert’s riffs feel mean-spirited. There’s an exaggerated head tilt, aviator glasses, and a jocular crooked smile.

My friend, the writer Delia Cabe, nailed it yesterday when she said, “Ad agencies seem to think being over 55 automatically means you are incontinent, hard of hearing, incapable of dealing with a laptop/smart phone and more. Pisses me off!”

We are in the midst of a global Covid pandemic, but America is also in an endemic of ageism. It isn’t just Colbert or Trump, who play the ageism card. The attitude crosses all categories. Comics, pollsters, advertisers, SNL, employers, developers, film makers – all of whom trade on the stereotype of older people as being “resistant to change, not creative, cautious, slow to make judgments, lower in physical capacity, uninterested in technological change, and difficult to train.” (Wikipedia). It suggests that at a certain age, if we are seen at all, we are regarded as impotent, genderless, isolated, and out of touch. And, contrary more obvious forms of stereotyping, like racism and sexism, ageism seems more embedded and resistant to change.

Earlier in our history and still in other cultures, families were nuclear and crossed generational lines. Today, America’s focus on retirement generally signifies the end of productivity. “Seniors” are “put out to pasture” and given rise to a giant industry that is contemporary society’s way to warehouse the old. How a society treats its own says more about it than it does about them. It’s part of a culture’s social contract.

In the ancient east, the concept of filial piety is one of the pillars of Confucianism. It goes back to 400 BC and in general terms refers to the duty to take care of and respect one’s parents, but in the larger sense to show love, respect, and support for the wisdom of one’s elders. It’s not so long ago that such respect was part of our own ethos. I was raised that way. My parents taught me it was good manners. How we treat others says more about us than it does about them.

Looking at the prevalence of ageism in our culture should take us back to all the recent talk about civility in discourse. It’s related. Filial piety, the Golden Rule, good manners, respect for differences. Maybe the late-night comics should think twice before they poke fun at us. Many of us are still working. Maybe they could cut us a little slack for living productive lives. Poke fun at Donald Trump for his ignorance, lack of empathy, weight, dalliances, and greed but not for his age.

On a more serious note, do you think the Covid response would have been different if 76% of the 876,000 Covid-19 deaths had been 18-35 year olds rather than those over 65? This is the ultimate example and tragedy of ageism. Are those of us over 65 not as important, not as valuable? Would the response have been ramped up if children were dying at the same rate? I doubt it.

Back to the beginning… I’d advise Colbert to think ahead. If 65 is where the zone begins, at 57 his aged targets are only 8 years older than he is. Be careful Stephen. James Corden is 43. Jimmy Fallon, 47. Seth Meyers, 48. You might just be in their sights 10 years from now. C’mon Stephen…man up.

Categories : Art, Books, Ethics, Politics, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure