The Help

“Did you read The Help?  Yes? Well, I have stories for you from Ugandan caregivers, you wouldn’t believe your ears,” laughs Julia Musisi, whose open round face and wide eyes radiate warmth. It’s an Indian summer day and it’s hot in my Marin living room.  Julia’s brown skin glistens with a light layer of sweat. 

We’ve just met but she feels so familiar.  “When I was 25, I came to Los Angeles from Kampala in 1995 and got a job working for an elderly woman who designed the NBC peacock.  You know that graphic?”  I nod.

“This woman, she had all of these pink chairs in her house.  She told her daughter, ‘I don’t know where Julia is going to sit. ‘ You see, she thought that the black of me would rub off on the pink chairs.”   

I laugh and say, “oh no.”  Julia says, “We got to be good friends.  I became family to her, but I had no idea what America was like.”  

“ Very racist, then and now,” I apologize. “White people suck”

“ Yes, and that Donald Trump,” Julia responds.  “What do you think of Hilary?  You know the Clinton Foundation has done so much good in my country around AIDS.”

And we’re off, talking for another 3 hours. 

Julia came over to interview for a job as a companion for my 87-year old mother. I got her name from a recommendation on Nextdoor, our neighborhood social media site.  

I describe my mom to Julia, explaining in detail who she was and who she is today, as she suffers from dementia.  Julia leans forward on the edge of the orange sofa, listening carefully with kindness. 

“She used to read all the time, play bridge, enjoy going to the theater.  She had her own business, a pharmacy.  She was smart, capable, in charge.  Extremely put together. Now it’s hard to engage her.  She doesn’t have friends. She never was very social.  My dad was the people person. She has difficulty reading now and she resists doing lots of things because she knows she can’t do them as well as she used to, if at all. She’s lonely.”

“We will find things to do together, “ Julia says.  “ I will take her out for walks, for coffee or tea, shopping, to the movies.”

“She loves watching movies, still,” I say.  “Doesn’t remember much when she leaves the movie theater, but that’s ok.”

“It will be good for her to have me with her,” Julia declares.

I agree. Julia got the job and we worked through the specifics, but that’s not where our conversation ended.  I asked Julia to tell me more about Uganda. 

“ I have an orphanage there, for 17 girls.  They live in a home I own on five acres of land.  I couldn’t have children, so I do this.”

Julia shares her success stories – two of her girls came to California to attend college. “One is becoming an RN, so she can return to Uganda and educate women to stop having so many children.  Most have seven, eight, nine, or ten, like it’s nothing.  Nothing. That’s what happens to young women.  They keep having the babies; they have no jobs and the poverty is so bad. Did you know that Cervical cancer is the number one cause of death for women in Africa?“

Julia, whose parents could not afford to buy shoes and clothes for their ten children, looks out our windows at Mount Tam and the Bay, delighted with the view.  “It is so lovely,” she says. 

Here we sit, in spectacular Southern Marin County, where the population is stricken with affluenza, and we raise entitled children who as Julia observed, “don’t even talk to their parents, and don’t know even how to cook a meal.  They can’t do anything for themselves. Really!”  

Here we sit, and this strong, smart, and big-hearted woman tells me what she does with her $25 an hour wage –how her mission is to empower girls to make better lives for themselves in her country.  “I want to build a school on my land and offer vocational training.  I got 20 sewing machines donated, and the local women, they come to my house to learn to sew. They can earn a wage, now.” 

When Julia speaks of her work and of Uganda, she is luminous and as bright as the afternoon sunlight  that won’t quit streaming into the room.  “You must come with me to Uganda and see,” she says.  She travels to Uganda several times a year, and has worked with other NGOs and Doctors Without Borders to provide trainings on how to screen for cervical cancer.

I ask her how she raises money for her projects. She joins me on my sofa side, as I get my computer to have a look at her web site.  She has founded an NGO called Voluntary Hearts Community for Girl-child Concern.  This reminds me of author Alexander McCall Smith’s name for his Botswanan character, Precious Ramotswe’s business -- the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.  Only a lot more is at stake here.

Julie has thought about doing a crowd funding campaign, but she doesn’t quite know how to do this. 

“I can help you,” I volunteer, with an open heart.  See the name works! 

“I am a writer and a good marketer, and I understand how to use words on the Internet. I’ve been doing this kind of thing for many years.  And Julia, I, too, want to empower girls in the world.”

“Women and girls in Africa, in Uganda have so much difficulty. The poverty, oh people do not understand how poor people live in third world countries,” Julia says. “If you do not want to see poverty, you cannot come to my country.”  And in the next breath, she again, invites me to come to Uganda, “and see for yourself.”

Her organization is dedicated to “sowing the seeds of love and care to the vulnerable young girls by improving their livelihood. “   The Voluntary Hearts Community targets girls who are orphaned, abandoned, exploited, and living with single or handicapped parents, or elderly caregivers.  They have helped 280 girls and young women so far.

She smiles, puts down her glass of water, then turns towards me, arms extended, and gives me a big hug.  

“This is the way we make change, by changing lives one at a time.  That is what you do, Julia. This is how it happens. I am so happy that you walked through my door today. I can help.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “I will help mother, and you will help the girls.”

“Yes.  This is good, we will help each other” I affirm.  “This is very good.”

Sadie, Sadie

Worried that we were in over our heads, we called in Marin’s dog whisperer, Trish King, for a consultation about Sadie, our new beautiful American Eskimo/Pomeranian/Poodle/Corgi /Chihuahua rescue.  After 11 years of “parenting” as Trish said, “…not a real dog,” – our beloved King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, Picasso – we needed help to better handle the new member of our family. 

Under a year old, she came from the streets of Oakland with the name, Sandy, but after the first day, our daughter modified her name, since, as she explained, “Everyone needs to have a dog at some point named Sadie.” 

Sadie, during Sophie’s gap year, will be Sophie’s primary responsibility and companion.  When Sophie heads off to college, we’ll be the foster parents.

We had several concerns, all of which, Trish, a soft and clear spoken woman who looks like she just stepped off a Marin hiking trail with a dozen docile perfectly behaved pit bulls in tow, expertly advised us about at a 90-minute meeting, or let’s call it a canine therapy session. 

When she was done, she enthusiastically reassured us that we had a fabulous, very smart and sweet dog, one that she wouldn’t mind adopting herself. She proceeded to demonstrate techniques and generously share her training secrets. 

We immediately started using them, and lo and behold, in the first week, they seemed to work, or worked about 75% of the time, which is a pretty damn quick fix (unlike my own “human” therapy). I am bullish (or doggish) on a behaviorist theory of change.  What a little chicken/liver treat, a turn of the body, or tone of voice can achieve.  I am bringing a little baggie of bite size morsels to my next session and our therapist can use them with me!

Sadie has a lot of energy and when she plays and greets you, she nips and jumps. She got even more aggressive when we told her “No,” or “Stop it,” and pushed her away.  It scared us. She has sharp pointy teeth and they can hurt.

Our response actually egged her on, and increased her intensity.  Turns out that we needed to “shun” her – this involves silently turning away, picking up your cell phone, looking out the window, or walking away.   When her energy is not being matched, and she no longer has your attention and she stops the behavior. “Dogs want an audience,” Trish explained.

“The important thing here is not to get angry, as it will just kick her into high gear.  Instead, be quietly powerful, and make your boundaries very clear,” Trish instructed.  We should calmly, softly, say the word “Enough.”

Be “quietly powerful.”  This is a radical concept for me to chew on.  I am a big talker, and when I’m angry, let’s face it, I have a persistent bark. I get loud and raise my voice.  Boundaries for me are also not so clear. I am guilty of co-dependent behavior, and often extend myself beyond what is good for me and for others in the service of “fixing” things. Suddenly, Trish’s lesson seems applicable to me as well as to Sadie. “Enough.”

The walking path, the place where I go for 5 to 6 miles each morning, meditating and peacefully musing about the world, had suddenly turned into a minefield.  Around each bend, Sadie exploded with what we thought was aggression towards many dogs (all sizes and colors), barking, growling, baring her teeth, and lunging at them.   People who knew me and the zen Picasso, cast concerned looks and stopped saying “Good morning.”

Trish got a big stuffed dog manikin out of her car trunk and had us walk Sadie up the street towards it, in order to evaluate her behavior.  Sadie did the rude barking, growling, pulling thing, and Trish determined that it was “dog reactivity” or “frustrated greeting.”

Sadie is not afraid of other dogs, she’s actually very friendly and she can’t wait to meet them. 

Trish prescribed the “Find it,” game as a way to manage Sadie in the face of oncoming canines.  You throw a treat on the ground, and instruct the dog to “find it.”  This distracts her, and also engages her. 

“Whenever possible, the dog should ‘find’ the treat, then look up to you….so that she is always searching for something,” Trish said.  

After a week of practice, Sadie mastered “Find it.” She was sufficiently distracted and shifted her attention to running down the treat, ignoring the oncoming dogs. Once the dogs got up close, Sadie just said “hello” like a normal person….I mean dog.

Trish also suggested teaching Sadie to catch the treats in her mouth, as this places her full attention on you, and makes her focus.  Sophie has already successfully taught Sadie to sit, lie down, crawl, stand up on her hind legs, dance, and shake paws.  She’s not at the treat catching stage yet, but she is one smart cookie.

Despite all the good progress, a week after our initial Trish consultation, Sadie started up with a new set of difficult behaviors. On the walking path she constantly bit at her leash and at my legs and hands, and I could not get her to stop. 

At home, Sadie would get in a frenzy and she‘d jump on Picasso, unfazed by his growling. Picasso, instead of backing away, escalates the growling and walks right into Sadie, holding his ground.  It gets ugly and we worried that someone would get hurt.

After resting throughout the day, Sadie becomes possessed with energy.  We call it the “witching hour,” when she will not listen or settle down. Shunning does not always work.  We put her outside, but when she comes back in, she resumes the bad behavior. 

We called Trish back for a second session and we sat together with the two dogs sleeping peacefully at her feet, the ENTIRE time, and discussed these new Sadie issues for an hour.

For the leash biting, Trish suggested stepping on the leash, and then showed us a move where you insert your fingers underneath Sadie’s collar and pull up at a 45-degree angle.  You don’t let up until she does.  You tell her “enough.”

Sadie clearly doesn’t like this.  It establishes you as the alpha, the boss. It also works when she does the “playful” nipping and biting. It even works with Picasso to get him to stop his attention seeking barking. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

The next morning on the walking path I did what Trish suggested.  I stepped on the leash and inserted my fingers underneath her collar.  I repeated this about 3 times in a row, and she stopped.  For the rest of the walk she was fine, no leash biting.  Each day if she tried to bite her leash I did the collar manipulation and calmly said, “Enough.”

The leash biting stopped (though occasionally she puts Picasso’s leash in her mouth – I’m not sure if she’s just trying to walk him…) and we’re having a great time on the path.  People now ask me about Sadie, and remark how friendly and pretty she is.  I tell them that she is a rescue, doing my little part to evangelize the need for people to take in animals.

An estimated 70 million animals live as strays in the United States. According to the Humane society, only about 6 to 8 million cats and dogs wind up in shelters.  Owners reclaim less than 30% shelter dogs  and 4% of cats, and only about 3 to 4 million cats and dogs are adopted from shelters each year. 

So, that’s a whole hell of a lot of dead animals we’re talking about.  I think about this when I look at sweet Sadie from Oakland.  I am so happy she didn’t become one of the bad statistics.

When we discussed Sadie’s harassment of Picasso, Trish suggested we put something between them (a blanket or piece of cardboard).  Also we can put her on her leash and do the step on it technique to get her to take Picasso’s not so subtle hint to be left alone. 

Trish thinks we can leave the dogs together in the house when we go out and that they will be fine together. Sadie likes to get into Picasso’s bed with him. He is warming up to her. He’s still jealous, and will growl if she is getting attention when he is not, or if she appropriates one of his toys.  But it’s improving.

                                                                       

Sadie is a spirited puppy who loves to play. Picasso never did much playing with his own species; he is very tranquil, and a great walker and fetcher, but not the rough housing type.  Sadie on the other hand, moves super fast, darts in and out, and runs circles around dogs of all sizes.

I’ve found a dog park to take her to across from the Larkspur Ferry and she’s made a bunch of new frolicking four legged friends.  Lucia, Lucifer, Russia, Todd, Diego, and Frieda just to name a few. Diego and Frieda slay me. Diego is a tannish brown bulldog who looks just like his namesake; Frieda is a dark feisty shih tzu with an artist's temperament, who for no apparent reason, goes off in fits of yapping.

I am getting a kick out of meeting new dogs and watching their interactions. I completely get why people write novels, memoirs, and books of poetry about their dogs. I have been in love with Picasso for 11 years; and now there’s Sadie, who’s winning over my heart. 

Two is a handful, literally.  My hands full of dogs, I start each day with a jaunt to my step, as we head out for our walk.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

I passed at man on the walking/biking bridge this morning. Unshaven and disheveled, his clothes in tatters, he carried his possessions in a large green trash bag, precariously balanced on the handlebars of an old battered bicycle.

Spotting Picasso, my sweet King Charles Cavalier Spaniel, the guy growled and spit, then out came a high-pitched sound. “Hi,” he said. “Hi. Hi. Hi.”  He greeted the dog with great joy, and then just kept talking and pushing his bicycle across the bridge.

It took the county almost two years to finish this little piece of the pathway, creating a concrete and white structure that rises up over Sir Frances Drake Boulevard near the Larkspur ferry, continuing to the other side of a mountain leading to San Rafael.

I had practically given up hope that they would ever complete the construction until one day the workers took down the fence gate blocking the entrance to the bridge and officially with no fanfare opened the crossing. When I followed the path it led to a tunnel marked with a plaque on the wall outside.

“When others only saw a mountain, Deb Hubsmith saw a light at the end of the tunnel.”  The Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) plaque thanks Deb for her vision and hard work navigating local, state, and national politics to get the infrastructure project funded.

Whenever I walk, I take time to notice my surroundings and think about the world. While I’ll never know the identity of that homeless bike guy, I was curious about Deb Hubsmith.

I discovered that Deb led the Marin bicycle lobby for years as its Executive Director. She worked to make safer street routes for walkers and bikers and advocated successfully for many projects and programs in Marin, across California, and nationwide.

Her mission: to create a healthier country of children and adults, by creating environments where being active could be the norm – for getting to school, work, or anywhere, as well as for recreation.

She piloted the Safe Routes to School program in Marin and statewide, then spearheaded a campaign to get Safe Routes included in the federal transportation bill. In 2005, Congress allocated $1.1 billion to implement this program in all 50 states. 

She founded the National Partnership, a coalition with more than 750 partners and a 30 person staff. In 2016, they secured $240 million for the Active Transportation Program to be implemented in California. This program awards grants that encourage bicycling and walking especially for children traveling to school and for residents of disadvantaged communities.

Deb Hubsmith was literally a mover and shaker – an avid bicyclist, a yoga instructor, a Reiki master, and a dancer, full of spirit, and interested in improving lives and bringing community people together to make change.  I never met her, in fact, until today, I had no idea such a person existed in my Marin backyard.

I would have liked to take a walk with Deb Hubsmith and thank her for her efforts, but sadly, she died about a year ago at age 46 of acute myeloid leukemia. I am certain that she moved her way directly into that light. 

Amcho

It’s 1945, a train station in Poland.

A young woman, her sister, and their mother, liberated by Soviet troops from Czestochow, a concentration camp about 125 miles east of Warsaw, get off the train.

They look around frightened. Families hug and noisily greet one another, but they stand silent by themselves.

Then they hear the word, “Amcho.” In Hebrew, it means “of the people” or “of the clan.”

Jews chanted this word when lost among people not trusted or feared. If there was another Jew in hearing range, she would know that she is not alone. Amcho.

In that train station, in that moment in war torn Poland, eight Jews who had lived through unfathomable hell, found each other, and walked out into the night.

In their disorientation and despair, they were chased and pelted with rocks by a band of thugs until an old woman dressed in black intervened and offered them shelter.

She stepped out into the street and cried, “Stop it! Stop that cruelty!”

My friend recently gifted me this new word “amcho” and along with it, a link to this stunning simple story that a survivor named Estelle Laughlin told to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

What do we have if we do not have each other? Without a way to connect and establish a sense of belonging to ourselves and to others, we are unidentifiable, inhuman.

Who can we hope to be if we don’t get involved, if we don’t call out and speak out and act up in the face of hatred and fear?

Today, I want to say “amcho” to Philando Castile, the young black man who was murdered in his car by police in Minnesota, while his 4-year-old daughter watched.

I want to say “amcho” to the young woman from Stanford, who was sexually assaulted by a white privileged boy swimmer and then marginalized by a corrupt judge. 

"Amcho" to the 50 gay people who were gunned down while dancing in Orlando and to John Lewis and his Congressional colleagues who staged a sit in to change our horrendous gun laws.

I want to say “amcho” to everyone who feels abandoned, disenfranchised, damaged, and disheartened by all the hatred and injustice around them.

We must seek refuge in our sense of “amcho” and allow healing to happen when we can truly embrace each other and feel embraced.  We are not alone.

50 Shades of Gay

I remember seeing my first identifiable lesbian in 1973.  I was in high school and had been crushed out on girls since 4^th grade, but didn’t have the words for my identity.  There she was, Jill Johnston, in all her glory, unapologetic and fearless, being interviewed on the Dick Cavett show at 11 p.m., wearing jeans, a button down men’s shirt, and black work boots, talking about writing for the Village Voice and being a lesbian. I was smitten.

In those years and the decade to follow, we would have said that she was on the “butch” side, and then may have modified that to call her a somewhat “femmy butch.”  Things were much simpler then, very binary.  Lesbians or dykes if they chose to refine their taxonomy were either butch or femme, or butchy femmes, or femmy butches.  Some lesbians were offended by even using these delineations, as they saw them as a throwback to limiting heterosexual roles.  Then there were the outliers like the Patti Smith and Robert Mapelthorpe, impossibly adorable artists whom we labeled “androgynous.”

When I was writing for lesbian/gay newspapers in San Francisco in the late 70’s to mid 80’s, it seemed that every year we were required to add another initial to the community designation.  First it was the “G” for gay community, then LG, then LGB, then LGBT.   Today there’s so many letters that there’s no street wide enough to fit the damn banner:  LGBTTQQIAAP (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, pansexual).  

Cut to 2015.  I’m jumping waves in the Pacific Ocean in Maui with my teenage daughter and listening to her explanation of the term “gender fluid.”  She tells me that a gender fluid identifies at any time as male, female, neutrois, or any other non-binary identity, or a combination of identities.  Depending on the moment, or the circumstance, their gender can vary.  Kind of like a chameleon, except I don’t think they can look in two directions at once.

We stay in the ocean discussing the panoply of terms that folks use to place themselves on the gender continuum, within the context of being queer, or not.

There’s genderqueer, (also termed non-binary or gender-expansive), a catchall for gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine. Those with non-binary genders can have an androgynous (both masculine and feminine) gender identity, such as androgyne, have an identity between male and female, such as intergender, or have a neutral or non-existent gender identity, such as agender or neutrois.   

You can be bigender (male, female), trigender (male, female and/or any non-binary identities), or pangender (a multiplicity of genders that transcends the current knowledge of genders).

Cisgender (often abbreviated to Cis) describes people whose gender experience agrees with the sex they were designated at birth.

Transgender (people who have a gender identity, or gender expression, that differs from their assigned sex) means that you get beat up for going into the “wrong” bathroom by straight men who despite having a record for harming young children that surpasses any other group of humans, have decided that legislating bathroom access is their top priority.

And along with all these distinctions, come the pronouns. Some genderqueer people like to replace the pronouns him and her with gender neutral pronouns like one, ze, sie, hir, co, ey, or singular “they,” “their,” and “them.” “Mx”is used instead of Mr. or Ms, and in Australia, you can even put it on your passport.

I must admit that despite my best intentions, I often stumble over the pronouns, get confused, and think we are talking about more than one person at a time when we aren’t.   And I did make the mistake of asking if one of my daughter’s lesbian friends had a girlfriend.  “No, she has a boy girlfriend.” I stood corrected.

It’s complicated and nuanced.  And I know that your average heterosexual cisgender person over the age of 30 probably has no idea what I’m talking about.  Although I am beginning to think that there is no such thing as the average heterosexual cisgender person over the age of 30.   That’s because they don’t have a flag!

Gertrude Stein, the quintessential butch lesbian wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose." Celebrating all of us on the eve of pride weekend 2016,  I declare, “A spectrum is a spectrum is a spectrum.”

Irish-Jewish Romance Run Amuck or My Personal Family Scandal

There’s nothing as fun as a family scandal. I first heard this juicy story about my grandmother Sophie about 30 years ago.  In the version my mom told me, her mother, Sophie Chernin, took a bullet meant for her sister Mayme, who was, God forbid, going to marry a goy against the wishes of her disapproving Jewish father.  In the middle of a big fight, her father, Meyer Chernin, in desperation, pulled a gun on her.  Sophie stepped between them, and was shot.  Sophie survived, and Mayme married the goy anyway.

Today, my cousin Bruce, who has taken an interest in pursuing the family genealogy, helped set the record straight.  He sent me a series of newspaper clippings from the Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania newspaper, 1927.

Here’s the first headline: 

City’s Irish-Jewish Romance Is Blasted Away

     Mamie Chernin Lyons, Jewess, Gets Divorce from Irish Husband,

     Michael  Lyons, Who Is In County Prison For Feloniously Wounding Her

     in Jealous Fit

The lead of the article reads, “Wilkes-Barre’s ‘Abie-Irish Rose’ romance is no more."

The “Abie-Irish Rose”reference is to a popular Broadway show about an Irish Catholic girl and a young Jewish man who marry despite the objections of their families. The play, at the time (1922-1927), had the longest run ever on Broadway, with over 1300 performances.  Though Life magazine theater critic Robert Benchley panned the play as "Something Awful", "Showing that the Jews and the Irish crack equally old jokes", "People laugh at this every night, which explains why democracy can never be a success," it clearly struck a cord, and went on to become two films (one in 1928, then another in 1946 starring Bing Crosby), a weekly radio series that ran from 1942-44, the basis for a TV series in the 70’s called Bridget Loves Bernie, and inspired the comedy of husband-and-wife team Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.

But back to the newspaper account of what really happened.

According to the facts, Mayme, a pretty 18-year old Jewish girl, married Michael Lyons, a 22-year old Irish Catholic guy, in a ceremony performed by a priest, “although Mayme’s parents vehemently opposed her marriage to one not of her own creed and race.” After living together for six months at the Lyon’s family home, Mayme succumbed to family pressure and returned home, deserting her distraught husband. 

A month later, Mayme and my grandmother Sophie, walking home one night from the theater, were accosted by Michael Lyons in a dark corner of East Market and Lincoln Street.  When they refused to speak with him, enraged, he pulled out a revolver and fired 3 shots, wounding Mayme in the chest and Sophie in the arm.  He was arrested and subsequently convicted on charges of carrying a concealed and deadly weapon and assault and battery with intent to kill.

While Michael was serving his sentence  (2 to 8 years) in county jail (he was also forced to pay a $100 fine), Meyer went to court and demanded that Mayme be granted a divorce from her “young, petulant Irish husband, while the latter, sickened and disheartened at the end of his romance, wistfully gazes from behind the bars of his prison cell toward the East Market street home where the young and pretty former wife is basking in the enjoyment of her family life.”

Judge Coughlin, who granted the divorce, at the same time decided to parole Michael Lyon after he served only a few months in prison.

But the story doesn’t end here.  So much for “basking.”

Another article appeared in the newspaper a month later, with this headline:     

“Eloping Couple Bound for West.”

       Michael and Mayme Chernin Lyon Remarried, Would Evade Interference

Two weeks after the divorce, Mayme and Michael, eloped and remarried.  They sent a letter to their families, noting that they were happily married and “on their way to a Western state where they proposed to make their home and did not want any interference from their families.”

There’s definitely something about this Irish-Jewish thing!  My daughter Sophie, sometimes complains that my wife of thirty years, Patricia, who is 100% Irish and vehemently an ex-Catholic, and I disagree way too much and too passionately.   But, hey, we’ve got nothing on my crazy ancestors!   

Postscript: The Lyons stayed married for over 50 years and had five children. They never really went West, only to New Jersey! My grandmother Sophie and her siblings resumed contact with Mayme after their parents died, though the true story of the Irish-Jewish romance run amuck was a confused family secret until now.