My list of grievances…

I am feeling irate lately, though there is no particular source that I can channel my considerable angst against, which sort of just compounds the feeling of irritation. It is just a general feeling of being rather “put out” as Prince Humperdinck put it with such succinct verve in The Princess Bride. And I don’t want to be some pouty misanthropic sadist so it’s best to get it all out of my system, right? Thus, let the trumpets herald, as the List of Grievances is unfurled.

1. Yes, I know that there is snow out there. I sympathize. In fact, I drive in the same damn snow so I empathize. But will your widdew SUV really sustain such massive internal injuries as to render it requiring life support if a snowflake or two should hit the windshield at the same time as the foot is on the gas pedal? Last I checked, motorized vehicles were manufactured so as to operate under such frightening conditions. Put on your wipers, drive slower than normal, but DRIVE.

2. When people walk two or three shoulder-to-shoulder on the sidewalk and do not have the common sense or decency to interrupt their conversational flow for three seconds so as to allow another to pass. Those people should be ticketed and forced to take an Urban Living 101 seminar. I’ll teach! We’ll address a myriad of topics, including but not limited to: blasting one’s radio, honking at law-abiding bicyclists, wearing too much perfume, and all the dreaded grievances one commits with a cellular devise attached to the ear…

3. The lady at the herb store down the street who positively goes into cardiac arrest if my son should pick up a little package of this or that to look at, like he’s playing football with a precious family heirloom or a Tiffany lamp. Jeez! She seriously needs some valerian or chamomile or something. Check into it, lady: you run an herb store.

4. The awkwardness I created when I baked some cookies for my neighbors on a whim for Christmas. They seriously are avoiding all eye contact. Ooookay.

5. The scraping sound of the shovel on the sidewalk once concrete is hit. Even worse? Those who don’t shovel at all. They should be forced to listen to the sound of shovel on bare concrete for an hour straight.

6. When I bang into something with my foot. Seriously, John knows to avoid me after I hit my ankle or stub my toe as I am filled with the fury of ten thousand angry toddlers. I’m not sure why this is so, but it is.

7. Cold weather. Well, I certainly understand the futility in raising an angry fist against, like, the weather, especially when I live in a cold climate by choice, but after a while in the bracing cold and wind, I just feel like saying, “You know what, Weather? You’re cold. We get it. You don’t have to keep trying to prove it to us, okay? You can get damn cold. You win.”

8. Lukewarm iced tea with, like, two iced cubes. It is absolutely worthless. It does not work as an iced beverage. It does not work as a warm beverage. Good iced tea is the nectar of the gods to me, and a haphazardly prepared glass is the sludgy bastard child of its fullest potential. Blech. [Maybe this should be covered in my Urban Living 101 class?]

9. When people pull the (insert whiny voice here), “I tried to be vegan, but…” But what? Your hair fell out in giant clumps? I’ve heard that one. Your skin turned green? Heard that one, too. You lost too much weight? I yawn. Oh, you gained too much weight. Yep, I’ve heard that one, too. It took too much time? I’m sorry…was I drumming my fingers? How rude of me. You feel more connected to the earth when you consume its inhabitants? How cool that you and Ted Nugent have so much in common. Okay, I do understand that veganism is a more challenging road for some than others, but I do get annoyed when I feel like people are coming to me for some sort of forgiveness, for me to lovingly pat them on the hand and say, “It’s okay, my child. You tried.” I will not. But, being grumpy, I will say this in response: “I tried to be an omnivore but my conscience was killing me.” Or, “I tried to be an omnivore but I ultimately found consuming carrion, ovum and mammary secretions to be rather foul.” Harsh? Perhaps. Take that up on your own list of grievances.

10. When the grocery store only has neon green bananas and rock-hard avocadoes. Yes, I’m spoiled.

11. When you smile at a stranger to be nice and you get the big ol’ stink-eye in return. Yes, I was trying to mug/stalk/seduce you right there. You caught me! Like the ability to greet a smile with a frown somehow increases one’s urban edginess: I think not, my friend. That’s an error in judgment and it proves that you need to take my seminar and be banished to distant suburbia for the day where the other non-smilers gather.

12. That my mother refers to all Asian food as “chop suey.” I know that it may be endearing to someone who is not her child, but to me, well, it pretty much makes steam come out of my ears, Ridiculous, I know. But, still…Chop suey?!

13. When you slip on ice and the next thing you know, you’re lying on a cold sidewalk, gazing up at the sky and your keys have flown from your coat pocket into a nearby snow bank so you must spend nearly a half-hour in the ever-diminishing available sunlight searching frantically for them as a child whines by your side. Just as an example.

14. Casein, whey, bee’s wax and other silly ingredients that make otherwise vegan items non-vegan.

15. When big ol’ sweaty people don’t wipe off the exercise machine as they exit it at the gym. Gross. Towels, people!

16. Republicans.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve got for you. What’s your grievance?

Shalom, everyone.

So...this Facebook thing...

Well, I was all set to be super-duper productive on (plant-based) steroids this Chrismukkah while my wee one was galloping through the house, high on Rice Nog and assorted crunchy tooth decay facilitators, but then my very good friend from college lassoed me like a plugged-in Annie Oakley and now I find myself whiling away my minutes on Facebook. A minute here or there turns into whole big pockets of wasted time, as we know, but how else will I know if someone I haven't seen in fifteen years - and my B-12-deprived brain scarcely remembers to begin with, thinking, 'Was she the one in my printmaking class? Why would she get in touch? She hated me. I never really understood that. Oh, well, I was kind of obnoxious. Or is she the one who dated that pothead I vaguely remember? Or were they the same person?') has successfully potty-trained her toddler. Or if that guy who is friends with my old friends has figured out how to work his new digital camera yet. I used twenty seconds of my precious time - twenty seconds I could use productively and purposefully, or, at the very least, I could have swept the kitchen floor in twenty seconds - uploading this information about toddler poop and camera frustrations into my malnourished brain. My brain desperately needs to be filled with with dense, enriching material like a new language or Remembrance of Things Past, but it hungers for this other stuff, these quick, empty calories.

At the same time, it hasn't all been empty calories. I have reconnected with people I thought would be hopelessly lost to me forever, people who were once very important in my life. A girl I was best friends with, who helped me through the darkest days of Junior High. There are three of my closest friends from college, who helped to shape me in the deepest way I could imagine, practically on a cellular level, now in my life again, commenting on my strange little status reports, me commenting on theirs. We have the same style of interacting as we did twenty years ago, the same jokey personalities coming through, and all that time that has elapsed just seems to have melted away with a click of the return key. It's really amazing. And I get to stay current with my wonderful friends of today, though my inner-devil's advocate wonders how much I really need to stay updated: do I need to know about the latest latte? Will Facebook became a vehicle through which I can further disengage from the ones I love, giving me the illusion of companionship when our communications are really always just skimming the surface? The jury is out on that one. I say all this because I am genuinely trying to figure this stuff out. Of course, I am very glad to be in touch with my friends.

So my hope is that I figure out a way to live with Facebook in my life. Right now, I am getting more from it than it is taking away from me, so I will use that as an indication that I should keep up with it. In the meantime, I'll try to shave my skimming of status reports regarding toddler poop and the like down to a few seconds.

That's all for now.

Shalom, everyone.

Reverend James Bevel...

This was written in a hurry, pouring out of me before we ended 2008. I have not edited it beyond a cursory look or two. Please accept as is...

I met the Reverend James Bevel in a nondescript, drafty room owned by a vegan restaurant on the south side of Chicago, a large space used for catering events. Reverend Bevel was a slight, slim man, with a graying beard, yarmulke-like cap and black Nehru-style jacket and slacks. This, I would come to know, was his standard uniform. He had an elegant, almost regal bearing, and as he greeted me that day, I had a hard time meeting his eyes, which were steely and intense. He did not smile as we met: this was serious business to him, the meeting of people.

It’s a little complicated how we came to know one another, but the purpose was simple and very ambitious: we aimed to build a vegan movement based on the same principles of Gandhian non-violent resistance as was at the foundation of the civil rights movement. Reverend Bevel had a group of activists he worked with on the south side of Chicago, all African American, nearly all women, and the idea was to bring his group together with my group of mostly Caucasian vegan activists. That day at the restaurant, many of us met for the first time: I met his daughter, who must have been around four at the time, his peaceful, gentle and much younger wife, Erica, a fiery and articulate associate named Valencia, another attractive young woman who was deeply dedicated to Reverend Bevel, among others. One common denominator of all “his” people – and we never did figure out a name for this group, so my husband and I referred to them as Bevel’s flock or group or acolytes – in addition to their race, was that they were all deeply religious people.

I was familiar with Reverend Bevel for some time before we met. I had read David Halbertstam’s excellent book, The Children, an exhaustive history of the civil rights movement, and James Bevel was stitched throughout, from the beginning until the end. By all accounts, he was a frustrating, difficult man to work with: headstrong beyond reason, he would remain steadfast in his views and behavior, no matter how emphatically or frequently he was asked to change. Despite his refusal to “play nice with others” his brilliance as a strategist was undeniable and he was respected as a, if not the, chief architect of the movement. His name is not better known for a few reasons, part of which is due to his divisive nature, which turned people away, and the politics of personality. Dr. King had a much more agreeable demeanor.

As a strategist, though, Reverend Bevel was unparalleled. It was his idea, over Dr. King’s reservations, to put children in the frontlines, specifically using this to dramatic effect in Birmingham, Alabama, where he organized children to march to city hall, bringing attention to segregation in a much more resonant way than it would have been with adults in their place. The public saw the excessive use of force used against the peaceful children – attack dogs and spraying hoses – and many who were sitting on the fence couldn’t help but be moved. This was one of the first examples of using the relatively new television medium to sway public opinion on a social justice issue, and he did so brilliantly. He also organized the march from Selma to Montgomery after a young civil rights activist was killed by Alabama state troopers, and the violence that was unleashed against the marchers ultimately helped to turn the tide: then-President Lyndon Johnson insisted that the Voting Rights Act be passed by Congress and it was. Reverend Bevel worked alongside Dr. King as his equal, and he was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education. Despite the reputation that preceded him – as a sex addict (he is rumored to have fathered between sixteen to nineteen children), as a loose canon – given what I knew about Reverend Bevel from The Children, I couldn’t wait to meet the man.

That first day at the vegan restaurant, he gave a presentation to our group, hinting at his skills as an incendiary orator, and he laid out his philosophy about what he felt had led the world astray: he drew a box on a sheet of paper with the letter F on each corner, arrows, leading from one to the next. To him, the root of every human-created problem on earth was what he called the “Four F’s”: Fornicating, Flesh-eating, Fighting and Fantasy-telling. To Reverend Bevel, if you engaged in one of these F’s, you set an inevitable chain-reaction in motion, leading to self-debasement, disengagement and violence. Fornication (which, by his definition, meant sexual relations for reasons other than procreation) led to flesh-eating and on and on, an endless cycle of depraved behaviors, a creating of hell on earth. As he described the “Four F’s”, I had a most bizarre cognitive dissonance: on the one hand, I was entirely unconvinced of his point-of-view and frightened by his fundamentalist convictions; on the other hand, I couldn’t stop listening. I was enthralled. Afterwards, as people were packing up to leave, he walked over to me and asked me point-blank about my faith. I blinked a few times. My faith? Yes, he said impatiently, what is your religion? Well, I was raised as a Jew, I told him, but now I’m more of a pagan. A what? He looked at me disapprovingly, those dark eyes appraising me. A pagan, I repeated. He nodded his head slowly and walked away. Later, John explained to me that to a fundamentalist, paganism means something very different than to a nature-loving feminist. I felt very naïve to not have anticipated this.

Despite this gaffe, we agreed to start meeting to try to get our vegan movement off the ground, my group of assorted, atheistic activists, and his group of very devout community organizers. We met every Friday night for a year at a gym near Greektown, discussing movement and the history of democracy and what it means to be a citizen in the mirrored aerobics room, plates of food on the long table in front of us.

Reverend Bevel and his flock would appear with giant rectangular pans bursting with food, freshly prepared: seitan made from scratch, casseroles, layer cakes. There was always an abundance of food. Early on, I said something to Erica, Reverend Bevel’s wife, staggered by the sheer amount of preparation that must have gone into their offering, just one meal of the week. Well, she said with a subtle smile, we do like to eat. (This left a lasting impression on me: Ever since this year of meeting with Reverend Bevel and the others, I always prepare way more food than I figure that we’ll need at a potluck. Social gatherings around food with meager offerings, bowls barely filled, always are a little depressing: let the platters runneth over.)

The year we met Reverend Bevel, which John and I came to call Our Year Of Potlucks (in addition to this group, which we came to call The Roots of Peace, we had a monthly EarthSave Chicago vegan potluck), was something that had my closest friends scratching their heads. How could I, an avowed feminist, a rejecter of fundamentalist values, willingly choose to spend time with people who looked to the Old Testament for moral guidance? I couldn’t explain it then and I am no closer to understanding it now. At times, I worried that I was being drawn into a cult; Reverend Bevel told us matter-of-factly that he wanted us to adopt their way of living (in other words, embrace the “Four F’s”). As he said quite solemnly to John, he had never had a white brother and he very much wanted one. This didn’t happen – we could never, ever make the sort of leap of faith he required – but we enjoyed the group for what it was: an opportunity to learn from someone who was a master at building movement, who understood how dynamic and fascinating it is to dig complex networks of democratic channels into communities, to be an engaged citizen. As the year progressed, our group whittled down to a core of five or six of us: many of the activist friends I brought along, though initially fascinated, eventually found Reverend Bevel’s dogmatic proselytizing to be an insurmountable obstacle to accept, and they understandably jumped ship. Once it became clear that John and I were not going to adopt his principles and become acolytes, Reverend Bevel lost interest in pursuing us. We parted amicably: he had other uses of his time, others to reach, more embracing of his views, and we were ready to move on as well. We saw Reverend Bevel and his group a few more times before they moved from Chicago to a farming community in the south, and it was always warm and friendly. The last time I saw Reverend Bevel, fittingly, it was at a crowded, boisterous potluck. He walked up to me and told me, with almost a childlike vulnerability and shyness, that he loved me. I told him that I loved him back.

I saw flickers of his famous temper, coupled with his vulnerability, throughout our time together. One time in particular, he became incensed at being interrupted by someone and jumped to the conclusion that the person was saying something that he was not. No matter. Once he was ignited, he just couldn’t undo it, and the string of expletives that issued from his mouth – almost like a Satanic possession had occurred for two terrifying minutes straight – shocked me, even as someone who is hardly traumatized by a curse word or two. But it was something that he did when he finally calmed down – the women in his group remained unfazed, reassuring the rest of us in soothing tones that this was merely Reverend Bevel speaking his truth – that made an impression on me: he looked at me with an expression full of shame and embarrassment, his head lowered, eyes fearful, almost like a child afraid of being punished. I had seen that look before, and I recognized it. It was the same way my father would look after one of his drunken tirades, after yet another violent transgression against me, against my family. Reverend Bevel, in his own way, was like my father. He and my father both had demons they struggled with their whole lives. Both aspired to overcome these demons, and both were rendered powerless to do so. I cannot know why someone like Reverend Bevel – someone who was so charismatic and brilliant – was unable to beat his demons.

Reverend Bevel passed away on December 19, 2008 of pancreatic cancer. I got a simple message from Erica that he has passed, that he was now, as she put it, an ancestor. In the two or more years leading up to his death, he was being criminally pursued by one of his daughters for sexually abusing her: the statute of limitations had not worn out. According to this daughter, there were other daughters with similar stories, and she was mainly pursuing this because she was concerned for James and Erica’s young daughter, now entering the age where he had begun his incestuous behavior with her, which he considered to be part of her “religious education.” He was convicted of incest and was granted an appeal bond; he died shortly after.

On hearing that Reverend Bevel was up on criminal charges for incest, I have to say that I was not shocked. Without going too much into it, I should just say that he reminded me of my father for a reason. Because I can well imagine the shattering horror that is incest, and because I am at my core a feminist, it makes it very hard for me to not write Reverend Bevel off as a depraved, manipulative, cruel monster. It’s very tempting and it’s understandable why someone would do this. That aspect of him is part of the picture, an essential part of the picture, but it’s not the whole one. Even sexual predators have three dimensions.

The memories of Reverend Bevel I will cherish are many: knowing him enriched me, made me a more committed, thoughtful person, and I think that I gave him back this gift. I will remember singing with him and our group after Friday night meetings, as it was Reverend Bevel’s conviction that all movements needed song, so John brought his guitar and sheet music. He had a beautiful, resonant singing voice, and he clearly relished creating music. I will remember his smile, his easy laughter, once he let his guard down. I will remember his depth as he spoke, his sense of humor, his wisdom. I will remember how dynamic it felt for a time when we were all together, rolling up our sleeves to dig into what we saw as our work: the work of compassion, using the model of Gandhi and King. We were invigorated by the work and each other.

So despite his deep flaws and misdeeds, I will continue to love Reverend Bevel. Sometimes you can’t explain why you love someone, and I wrote this whole piece trying to explore that very question, coming to the conclusion that sometimes you just do. In loving him, I have forgiven him. In forgiving him, I have forgiven my father. In forgiving my father, I am expanding myself. In expanding myself, I am a better person.

I am grateful to Reverend Bevel for making me a better person. I hope that he has found peace, and I hope this for his children as well.

Shalom, everyone.

The Rebel Jesus...

And on this day, I have to post the lyrics to my favorite Christmas song, The Rebel Jesus. It's a little obvious in places, but it captures my feelings, on the holiday but especially the man, entirely. If you can get your hands on it, please get the Martha Wainwright version on the McGarrigle Christmas CD. I had heard the Jackson Brown version before as we also have the Chiefton's CD on which this originally appeared, but Martha Wainwright recorded the version which really is moving. Enjoy your Christmas!

The streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants' windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
As the sky darkens and freezes
Will be gathering around the hearths and tables
Giving thanks for all God's graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

They call him by the "Prince of Peace"
And they call him by "The Saviour"
And they pray to him upon the sea
And in every bold endeavor
As they fill his churches with their pride and gold
And their faith in him increases
But they've turned the nature that I worshipped in
From a temple to a robber's den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgement
For I've no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In this life of hardship and of earthly toil
We have need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus.

Hanukkah, oh Hanukkah!

Last night we had our Hanukkah party, which was every bit the bacchanalian affair, minus, uh, the sex and drugs. [There was homemade lemon liquor, and that's sort of bacchanalian, right?] We had my two wacky, wonderful friends of "Germanically-oppressed" heritage (and not one of us is from the same background, which shows you just how busy those Germans were in the early-to-mid twentieth century with the business of oppression), and their mutual families, as well as my mother and our son's honorary uncle. It was such a warm and festive night. The kids went wilding, of course, and we had our fill of latkes, mock chopped liver, three different salads, stuffed mushrooms, spicy olives, eggplant caviar, donuts, cream cheeze blintzes, sugar cookies: what a feast! John peeled and grated ten pounds of potatoes and chopped three pounds of onions - with nary a complaint, as the man is decent and good, and, I suspect, also paying penance for his German heritage - and I did most of the other food-related jobs.

During the Jewish holidays, I always get very sentimental, missing my grandparents. My grandparents were not religious, but they did celebrate the holidays in that way that secular Jews do: with food. As my kitchen filled with that heady scent of lots of hot oil, something uncommon here as I seldom fry, I was transported back to my grandmother, and she to me. Food has a deeply emotional pull to us, as we know. I remember a party I was at once years ago, I must have been sixteen or so. My grandmother had brought rugelach, an Ashkenazi Jewish pastry wrapped in a crescent around a sweet filling, usually preserves, dried fruit and nuts, and baked. A middle-aged man my grandmother had just met, a friend of a friend, closed his eyes in pleasure as he took a bite, sighing: he too was transported to his own childhood, to his mother's or grandmother's rugelach, to warm memories and comfort. Swept away, he impulsively leaned over and kissed my grandmother on the cheek, causing her to giggle. She was both a nurturer - she loved to nourish people, which is probably the root of my love of cooking for others - and a shameless, though always innocent, flirt. From Proust's infamous madeleine to M.F.K. Fisher's ever-elegant prose, musings on food and its profound affect on the human spirit has been explored with depth but it is never quite enough.

Once again, I feel grateful to be able to revisit these old foods while still maintaining my commitment to veganism. The latkes I made were not missing anything by their absence of chicken ovum: in fact, they were more meaningful because I could pay tribute to my grandmother and, oh, yeah, the Maccabees, on my terms, in my unique way. Plus, they rocked! I also feel grateful to have such wonderful, supportive and passionate friends with big appetites, who showed up, variously, wearing big ol' sequins and bearing luscious European dark chocolates. (I just ran off and gobbled the last two squares.) I am blessed.

Shalom, everyone.

PS - Can I just tell a little cute thing about my son? Of course I can. It's my blog. Anyway, he creates holidays for our cat. Hanukkah has been re-imagined as "Hanu-meow" for Clover, during which time she celebrates the Miracle, which was the day that she beat our dog in a race. Never mind that she is a nine-month-old kitten and he's a thirteen-year-old, partially stroke-addled basset hound - this is apparently miraculous enough to celebrate and who am I to begrudge a little celebration? Happy Hanu-meow, Clover...

So this is Christmas...

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity around here, trying to finish up one intense self-imposed deadline (I would say "Mission accomplished!" but that term is pretty much meaningless and tainted with ugliness post-W) and contending with all the busyness of the season. There is so much to do around here this time of year, not just buying gifts, decorating and whatnot. There are Santa-commandeered 'L' trains to catch, Tchaikovsky-scored ballets to view, cranberries to string and pine cones to spread with peanut butter and roll in bird seed, and on and on. Mind you, we haven't done any of those things yet, but it still takes up my time thinking about all the festive and enriching activities that we are currently missing. So I am actively absorbing my time in a state of neurosis, which is perhaps the purest expression of my holiday spirit seeing as I am of the Semitic, desert-wandering orientation.

For what it's worth, I'm not all that impressed with Hanukkah either, which kind of seems like an also-ran this time of year, though we do celebrate and will be having a little vegan latke-devouring party - maybe we should make it into a competition? - at our house Tuesday night with a couple of my shiksa friends and their families, my mother and Justice's adopted uncle. I'm looking forward to this very much. It has always struck me as comical and perhaps very telling that at the foundation of nearly every (or is it every?) Jewish holiday story is the hard kernel of oppression. Even Purim, the supposedly fun Jewish holiday, has the threat of the annihilation of the tribe at it's core. I think that in my heart of hearts, I have a distinctly Jewish soul, so I cannot help but find this to be very funny. (My friend - a fellow Jewess - and I were belting out "Sunrise, Sunset" together a few weeks ago and after we sang, "One season following another, laden with happiness and tears...," I pointed out that this is the summation of the Jewish character in two neat lines. Of course we laughed and laughed.) Anyway, some Chanukkah (yes, I'm spelling it different this time, and it occurs to me that maybe there are so many different spelling of the holiday because Jews are an argumentative, contrarian people) ideas: we will dance the Hora, which my son picked up at his cousin's Bat Mitzvah last weekend, and, oh, I think this is a good one: I want to go Hannukah caroling. That's right! Our neighbors to the south, Ed and his adult son, will be hearing about dreidels fashioned out of clay, and our neighbor to the north, a lively Jamaican woman, will be treated to "Chiri Bim." Because that's the sort of neighbor I am. To me, it's just hilarious, this subverting of Christmas traditions, and there's this added layer of, "Wow, maybe people will see how invasive and arrogant it feels when it seems like the rest of the world assumes you are a religion that you are not." Welcome to the Jewish experience!

Anyway, latkes, salads, Star of David-shaped cookies, perhaps even an attempt at vegan blintzes, something I have not had since I was a teen. Sounds good, right? Hopefully once Chrismakkah is over, I'll be able to post more vegan feminist-y screeds. For now, though, the bed is beckoning me.

Shalom, everyone.

Update schmupdate...

Well, I've been swept up in all the holiday madness and a close deadline so I've been unable to update. I will as soon as a) I have more time, and b) I have something interesting to report. Hopefully that will be sooner than later.

Shalom, everyone.