Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

The Woman King: film review

Take a slice of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, together with a large dollop of Black Panther, add to that the stunning physicality of 57-year-old Viola Davis and her young, emotional co-star Thuso Mbedu, and you get a sense of the power, speed, and martial beauty of The Woman King.

With women in the roles of writer, director, producer, and many more behind-the-camera positions, it is an action film like no other, based on a vision that is absent any male or white gaze. There is violence, but not the kind that makes you look away cringing – other than some flashbacks to abuse. There is love, but it is forged in sisterhood and solidarity. And there are massive fight scenes with a cast of multitudes, brilliantly choreographed and impressively executed.

Underlying it all is the story of a struggle against slavers in Africa and their collaborators. I know there is a debate about the veracity of the historical interpretation, but I’m not in any position to judge. What I do know is that this is a glorious, cinematic spectacle.

Nanisca (Viola Davis) leads the King’s guard of muscular, fierce women warriors. He chooses her as his Chief Advisor over his vain, beautiful, over-adorned wife. Other men aren’t even in the running. Through a mixture of discipline, training, and loyalty, her corps seems to become unstoppable, despite the harrowing challenges they face.

The 99% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes hints at how exciting, meaningful, and luscious this film is. I was left breathless and electrified at the end.

The trailer

Nasty-Assed Ads

“Law & Order” is often my white noise when I’m doing the dishes or eating a meal. Apparently the re-runs assume an audience of my age peers, because the ads are usually for memory boosters or arthritis dampers.

Today a commercial break begins with a grimacing man naked under his robe, his foot up on the bathroom sink, and his arm reaching back into his crotch. Suddenly, a woman’s voice and person pops up saying, “Guys, we need to talk about your hairy balls.” This very phenomenon ("trimming balls") is news to me, although I admit my balls expertise is limited. The word, repeated multiple times, is jarring to hear on TV. But who is demanding bald balls?

Got one minute to learn about ball shaving?

As if that weren’t sufficiently surreal, another crotch-focused ad followed immediately. This one for pussy deodorant. Companies have been trying for decades to turn women’s crotches into swampy, smelly cesspools, and according to a completely random survey of my besties, they have never succeeded. But if they can afford an ad on “Law & Order,” they must be moving a lot of this misogynist product.

Wanna see their nasty-assed ad?

The anti-sex, body-shaming message of both these ads is that however you exist naturally, it simply ain’t good enough. More than that, your body is disgusting. Trim this, stifle that – otherwise your life will suck.

In fact, I find these ads so offensive that I’m hoping to once again hear about cancer meds, the meaning of “a1c” levels, and life insurance for $9.99 a month.

PS: A friend thought these must be Saturday Night Live skits. But no, I did really really see these ads during an afternoon “Law & Order.”

Review in 90 words: HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song

I was disappointed to realize that Leonard Cohen isn’t the star of this film.

His song Hallelujah is the subject. We hear from a long string of musicians who more or less made their careers covering this song. We learn little new about Cohen himself, a conflicted, complicated artist. Instead, it’s all about the song’s journey as so many others reconfigured Hallelujah to suit their own needs. The ending was quite moving, when Cohen returns, broke, to the stage. And we get to hear KD Lang’s brilliant rendition of Hallelujah.

Here's the trailer:

 

Forgot to tell you about the Queer Cabaret tonight/tomorrow!

Oops, I completely forgot to blog about my inclusion in a stunningly talented line-up for the Queer Cabarets, produced by Peter DiMuro. What a great way to celebrate Pride and of course everyone is welcome.

This will be a fabulous Queer Cabaret - singing, dancing, drag queens, comedians - and me (!). I perform on Friday June 17 and Saturday June 18 (6:00 and again 8:30 both nights). It's not too late for you to get tickets for the Central Square Theater.

The shows will feature  area and national LGBTQ+ community members, ages 20’s to 70’s and from all points on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Expect wonderful performances - can we say high-heeled pole-dancing meets Cole Porter? - along with the funny and often poignant reflections on gay to queer lives over the span of 100 years.

Here’s the direct link for getting tickets:

https://ci.ovationtix.com/2462/production/1126320

 

 

 

 

 

Celebrating the Life of Is Szoneberg

Today I got up at 5:00am in order to be fully ready for the funeral of my dear friend Is Szoneberg in Hawick, Scotland. I joined the funeral by Zoom, with a perspective from the rear of the hall, and even without the intimacy of sitting among loved ones, I was profoundly moved by the service. It opened with Elvis singing “Only Fools Rush In.” Is requested we wear pink, her favorite color. Our colleague and friend Jane told me that she wore pink under her scrubs at work this morning, since she had to miss the service.

It was conducted by a Humanist celebrant, which means no mention of any gods or religion – just to my taste. The facilitator is a lesbian and she was able to convey an accurate and authentic impression of our Is (Isobel; Isabella) and of her commitments to her sweet wife Anne (“my best girl” she always said) and to the community of women. It was an exquisite, heartfelt celebration.

Is and Anne pushed past every obstacle to social recognition of their love over decades. When civil unions were finally available, they got a civil union. When marriage was finally available, they got married. They were fully committed and they wanted the world to know.

Is got a form of cancer that is a silent killer and by the time it was found, it was much too late to do anything about it. She was sent home to receive palliative care and to say her goodbyes. Is wrote to tell me the bad news and Anne facilitated a phone conversation between Is and me that lasted three quarters of an hour. I thought I’d be able to have one more call with her, but she was already unresponsive the following week.

When I got the job as London Manager at CSV (Community Service Volunteers) in 1991, Is was then Scotland Manager. We bonded very quickly, being the only two lesbian managers in this large UK non-profit. Her wit and her sincerity won her great popularity on the Management Team. Everyone appreciated her remarkable ability to use good humor to calm down disagreements in the Team.

Is and I socialized outside of work when she was in London or when I visited her in in the north of England, where she was living when we first met. My first experience of karaoke was when Is, after some liquid encouragement, was persuaded to take the mic in a bar there and let loose.

Fast forward a decade, during which both of us earned multiple promotions, when due to some so-called “re-structuring,” all middle managers were let go, myself included.

Because I was in my 50s, it was hard to find another job and I began to freak out. I had been supporting myself since the age of 17 and it was terrifying to be out of work. Is began to call me daily. I mean every single solitary day. She called me without fail for almost a year until I finally accepted a job in the States and flew to Boston. I will never forget that profound act of kindness and support, her sense of solidarity and friendship, her generous love. I will never forget Is.

 

The Greatest: Burns was not up to the challenge

Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns, and her husband David McMahon, were not the right people to make the lengthy documentary on Muhammed Ali for PBS. I felt the long series had a subtly hostile tone to Ali and a more explicit hostility to boxing. Despite having the resources to access piles of stunning archival footage and despite having a massive eight hours of airtime, the entire work was devoid of emotion. Muhammed Ali was a passionate, emotional figure, but this was not reflected in the deadpan commentary, not the least by the guy they presented as the biographer of Ali, who seemed barely conscious.

This is not to minimize the insights of the brilliant writer and Ali fan Walter Moseley, the inside view of Ali’s brother Rahman, and the expert blow-by-blow from former boxer (and now actor) Michael Bentt. In fact, if it weren’t for Bentt, the series would have been stumbling around the ring helplessly.

If you have been a fan of Ali, as I have been most of my life, then there isn’t much new in this chronological series – other than wonderful clips and images. I appreciated that Burns allowed the women in Ali’s life to talk about his obsessive cheating and need for conquest after conquest, while they provided a home, a haven, and a family. But I was irritated that Burns acted like he had single-handedly discovered that people get hurt boxing and that Ali could be mean during a fight. Burns brought no real insight into Ali’s relationship to Elijah Muhammed and the Nation of Islam. We see his involvement, we see his betrayal of Malcolm X (which he regretted his whole life), and we see that his connection with the group’s leader was a bit of a roller coaster. But Burns provided no depth, no clarity, no understanding of Ali’s experience of Islam. And then there was the way Burns twisted Ali’s unique charisma into some sort of manipulation, when in fact Muhammed Ali widely inspired love. I adored him myself.

The most profound deficit was a total lack of appreciation of boxing throughout the series. We were shown the worst moments of every fight, the blood, the broken noses, the pain. Thankfully, we were also shown some of the spectacular conditioning and training the pros went through. But the filmmakers seemed to have only the most rudimentary grasp of the degree to which Ali brought rhythm, motion, and dancing to the fight. No one ever moved in the ring the way he did. Before Ali, no one ever imagined the sweet beauty a fighter could bring to such a brutal sport. Before Ali, no other boxer floated like a butterfly.

I grew up following Ali, starting with his 1960 Olympic win when I was 13 and was just becoming aware of the civil rights movement. He was only 18 and won all four of his fights in Rome. Over the years, I kept my eye on him, as if we were growing up together. His later struggle against the war in VietNam meant everything to those of us fighting the cops in the streets to protest that vile war. His ability to connect oppressions – “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong… No Viet Cong ever called me n****r.” – was an education for us, as was his example of civil resistance to the draft. And all the time he was the most fluid, graceful fighter we had ever seen.

My exposure to the fight game began early. My parents were big on sports, almost any sport that involved our hometown Pittsburgh. Once we got a black and white TV, we would eat dinner sitting around a card table watching Studio Wrestling on Saturday nights. It originated out of Pittsburgh, and we were as familiar with Killer Kowalski and his main antagonist local boy Bruno Sammartino as we were with our relatives. My dad knew Referee Izzy Moidel, a local ex-boxer. Each of the wrestlers had a schtick and a script – it was fake fighting. Obviously. But I got a taste for the give and take of the fight from those weekly broadcasts. (And went on to become a Tae Kwon Do master for my first career, but that’s another story.)

When Muhammed Ali turned up, he had his schtick too, but he was for real. Boxing was for real. Ali gave shape and meaning to one-on-one combat, not only by being brilliant in the ring, but also by being brilliant out of it. He harnessed his charisma and his pronouncements to his beliefs and became one of the most influential athletes in history.

The Burns group seemed to think that Ali was “interesting,” a celebrity, entertaining. But I didn’t feel the love. Of course, they pointed out his athletic and political contributions, but I was left wondering if they had any feel for the depth of his influence. They stayed, it felt, on an unexcited, slightly aloof level of exposition, more interested in the count than the fervor: one, two, three – Ali won the heavyweight championship three different times.

There’s been a lot of discussion about why Burns (white/male/straight) has the total indulgence of PBS, which for 40 years has broadcast some 200 hours of his work! Meanwhile, there are generations of filmmakers who can’t get their toe in the door, not the least directors of color and women. A long-term Boston PBS tv host, the racist, reactionary Emily Rooney (yes, the daughter of –nepotism is becoming a theme in this piece), retired from her show after her disgusting dismissal of the very idea that a filmmaker of color could reach the heights of Burns. Over 300 film and TV professionals wrote a complaint letter to PBS asking “How many other ‘independent’ filmmakers have a decades-long exclusive relationship with a publicly-funded entity? Your commitment to diversity at PBS is not borne out by the evidence.” The privileged position of the Burns group impacts everything about their work – and in the case of Muhammed Ali, makes them the wrong group of people for the job.

Want to get an intimate sense of Muhammed Ali? Do yourself a huge favor and watch Billy Crystal’s hilarious, moving 14-minute tribute at Ali’s funeral. I’ve seen it a dozen times and have never failed to tear up. Eight hours of Burns’ presentation and I never felt much other than annoyance.

 

The Lipstick Assault in Serene Manor,

I am SO thrilled to see my short story The Lipstick Assault in Serene Manor, about being an old dyke in a nursing home, published in the September issue of the fantabulous Gertrude Press!!

Click to read and feel free to pass it on.

 

Madeline Davis (July 7, 1940 – April 28, 2021)

I did not know that Madeline was a famous, beloved political and cultural pioneer when we first connected. I did not know that she created the foundation for a class-conscious lesbian and feminist movement in Buffalo, a town much like my own hometown Pittsburgh – dying industrial cities. I did not know that Madeline served as the first open lesbian delegate (for George McGovern) at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

I met her online. Which sounds today like a normal thing to do, but was very unusual in 1995. I was living in London and after breaking my leg at work, I was shut in for a month dragging around a teal-colored cast. I decided to write a booklet about lesbians and aging (yes, it’s been my topic for a very long time). I devised a survey and went about trying to get it distributed by email among lesbians. I was making it up as I went along, because I myself had not yet seen or filled out any kind of digital survey. Email was just becoming popular.

For context, I need to explain that these were the days of dial-up, a noisy, slow, annoying way to access the Internet. To help date my effort, let me point out that Wikipedia was only launched in January, 2001; it was in 2005 that the term “WiFi” became sufficiently popular to enter the Merriam-Webster English Dictionary; it wasn’t until 2008 that Facebook began getting more hits than MySpace.

Somewhere there are floppy discs with the many answers that I received back from women. None was more interesting than the response I got from a Buffalo girl named Madeline Davis. Her thoughtful, insightful ideas led us to a continuous email conversation about politics, class (we were both working class), and art. Sometimes we even talked by phone, although trans-Atlantic calls were an expensive and rare indulgence.

When I was mobile again, I decided to fly to the States for Thanksgiving and Madeline invited me to stop in Buffalo for a few days to visit her and her life-partner Wendy. They picked me up at the airport in the middle of what seemed like a major snowstorm, but which to these Buffalo residents seemed like a Tuesday. Instead of going straight to their house, we stopped at a strip mall in front of a department-store-sized pet shop. I lived abroad for 24 years so I was unaccustomed to what had happened with super-sized American retail box stores. I remember how the size of the store blew my mind. We loaded up the car with huge bags of cat food and kitty litter and drove to their house.

But there was a conundrum. The cats lived on the second floor and between Madeline and Wendy there wasn’t a single working knee able to easily mount those steps lugging a burden. I volunteered to carry up the bags, one by one, and so I cemented a warm welcome from the cats. One of those cats was very old and sick. Madeline and Wendy took me to a healing session with friends of theirs. I believe one friend, in particular, led some chanting and blessings I couldn’t understand, and comforted the two women. Madeline herself was a Reiki Master who conducted these kinds of sessions, it turned out. I was totally out of my element. I had never owned a furry pet, nor had I ever attended an event in which a group of women talked in spiritual terms. I was (and am) a socialist, atheist, ass-kicking materialist – in the Marxist sense that I believe what I can see and touch. I don’t have a religious or spiritual bone in my body. That session was a fascinating visit to another world.

Madeline turned out to be a true Renaissance woman, who had founded numerous progressive organizations, wrote songs that became gay anthems, co-wrote a beloved book Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community, taught the first university level course on lesbians “Lesbianism 101,” and that very year was featured on the poster for a tattoo show. It was selected as the Best Color Poster of the year by the Commercial Printers & Publishers Association. I wish I still had the copy that Madeline and Wendy gave me.

The visit was unforgettable. Their hospitality to a stranger from abroad was generous. Wendy and Madeline got a chuckle out of the butch/femme pillow cases I brought them from London (which Wendy just today reminded me of). Their house was super-comfy, their relationship was a joy, and they were surrounded by loving friends.

We are losing our founders and it is one of the difficult aspects of aging. The loss hits the community hard, and that community extends to the several generations impacted by Madeline’s revolutionary, innovative legacy. I have learned so much about Madeline since I learned of her death and read the tributes pouring in. If you want to know more, you can start here at her Wiki page.

My deepest condolences to Wendy.

My 365 Day Anniversary: March 10 2021

365 days ago I understood that I needed to shut my door against Covid-19. But first I had to make some stops. I went to Trader Joe’s and stocked up with multiples of everything that seemed crucial. I bought liquid dispenser soaps, bars of soap, shampoo, cleaning products, toilet paper, tissues, paper towels, hand cream, and food galore. I went to Walgreens and snagged medical gloves, Clorox spray, wipes, Vitamin C, and candy. At the bank, I got hundreds of dollars of cash, not the least $1 and $5 bills for tips I anticipated giving. I stopped by the post office and loaded up on local and overseas stamps, before gassing up the car, although I did not foresee that it would not be touched by human hands for the next 50 days.

I’m not sure how I knew so clearly what to get and what to do to prepare for a pandemic and to weather a shut-down, but I attribute my prescience to a life-long Holocaust mentality. I suspect that this is the result of a genetic propensity, in a metaphorical sense.

My mother had infinite cheap plastic handbags to match her every outfit. I went through them when she died. (I found over $700 hidden around her place among her things and I bet I missed plenty.) Each purse had a $5 bill, one of those fold-up plastic rainhats women of the 1950s depended on, a comb, and a disposable razor blade with which she scraped at the old-lady whiskers she grew. This is my heritage: a strong streak of just-in-case-ism.

I have squirrelled away $5 bills in the pocket of every coat and jacket I own – just in case. Likewise, I have food in every bag, in every room, and in the glove compartment of my car, just in case. I’ve been saving money all my life even when I scarcely made enough to live on – just in case things got worse. And “just in case” has come true for us all this year.

I live alone in an apartment that has one large room and then a little bedroom in which I can do nothing but sleep and dress. There’s not even a place for a chair. In short, I’m living and writing and eating and entertaining myself and reading and phoning and exercising and Zooming in this one room. But I’m lucky to have a fine view of a pond and a balcony on which to sit and watch the sunset, weather permitting.

After years of begging, I had succeeded a couple of months earlier in convincing my landlords to change my scuzzy wall-to-wall carpet to lovely new grey carpeting. I also found just the perfect credenza (a long sideboard) in February following a couple of years of searching. My friend Debi, who can do it all, came over and spent an entire day putting it together. I disposed of the heavy oak Art Deco pieces that came over to the States with me from London in 2000 – pieces that were too big for my one room. I hung the original collage paintings of Sandy Oppenheimer - a self-portrait and a portrait of Chadwick Boseman -- over my marble sculpture by Jaya Schuerch. In short, my home was much improved and comfy for settling in.

From the start, all the fatality stats were showing that hypertension was a top complicating and deadly factor when it came to Covid. My Dr and I had been struggling since the November before Covid to get a grip on my high and erratic blood pressure. I was determined to survive, that is, to avoid Covid, and I set myself restrictions far beyond those of many other friends. I was inside for the long haul.

In that first week or so I negotiated an arrangement with my bestie, Barry. He also lives alone. He is also a very cautious person. We decided to weather the lock-down together/apart, to speak daily, to provide support. Neither of us would see any other friends in person so that eventually we would actually meet safely. Barry was the first to buy good commercial masks, and he mailed them to me. But I was a bit stuck and could not go out – because of the elevator.

My building was built in the early 1970s and the single elevator – like the rest of building – has never been updated. Few workers today know anything about this elevator’s ancient technology and parts have long since ceased to be available. A maintenance company finds substitutions and comes to tinker whenever it gets stuck. Fifty apartments use this elevator and there is no obvious ventilation. I did not feel that I could use the elevator to go down to my mail (7 stories) or my car (8 stories). I was afraid it would be full of cooties and I’m sure I was right.

My mailman, always a sweetie, started bringing my mail up to the 7th floor and leaving it outside my door whenever my little mailbox became crowded. A young dance friend picked up my prescriptions from the pharmacy when they were refilled. A volunteer did my first shopping, arranged by a mutual aid group in my town, before I found an indie professional shopper, a single mother whom I tip 35% because she is doing something for me that I won’t do myself.

Laundry was the biggest problem. No way was I going into the shared laundry room – shabby enough in the best of times. My friend, Bren, came to visit by standing down in the parking lot as I leaned over the balcony. The distance is so far that we used our phones like walkie-talkies in order to hear each other. She insisted on taking my laundry. I stuffed everything into a big black plastic bag and heaved it over my balcony guard rail. It landed with a dramatic explosion that brought people running out of their homes up and down the block.

Bren and her friend took my car for a drive around the block at some point, but it was only on May 1st, 50 days after I had gone inside, that I got to experience the outside world via my phone. Barry came over to drive my car around. I wrapped the keys in a padded envelope which I put into another padded envelope that I tossed off my balcony. It fluttered down to him as gracefully as Pavlova’s arabesque. He got in my car and FaceTimed me. As he drove my car around my neighborhood and then further into my little town, he pointed his iPhone camera towards the road. I could see what he saw. I was visually riding shotgun. Flowers were blooming, bushes were verdant, there was a world out there. I sobbed – for all I had missed, for all who were dying, for all who were struggling. To celebrate my tour, I ordered some pasta from a local restaurant that not only came out and put it in the trunk – now known as curbside – but also donated a meal for a hungry local elder for every meal that was bought. Barry put the food in its bag inside the elevator and sent it up to me. It was the first food I would taste that I hadn’t cooked myself. I wrote my first pandemic blog.

Only on May 22, after 73 days inside, did Barry find face shields for sale online. With good masks and the protective shields, we felt sufficiently safe to go up and down the elevator. It meant meeting a human in person for the first time in over two months. It meant driving my car. I decided to “go away” and drove myself to the town where Barry lives and entered his apartment. I was inside other four walls and it was as exotic as my trips to Machu Picchu or Pusan.

Now we get together for 20 hours each week – from Friday dinner to Saturday lunch – and each Saturday, if it isn’t raining or snowing, we take walks in parks and woodlands and at lakes we never before knew existed. I’ll Google a nearby town – say Carlisle, near Concord – and inevitably there will be somewhere magic to visit and stroll. We have been amazed at how little we knew about nature spots right in our own towns and the surrounds.

Everyday I say to my bestie Sandy, who lives in Northern California, but with whom I talk daily: We are among the lucky ones. We have a roof, heat, the interwebz, food, safety, cars. We have art to work on with passion. I know I’ve had it significantly easier than most people: I’m retired so I did not lose my job or my income. I’ve lived alone since 1977, so nothing new there. I’m a writer and used to sitting at this desk many hours a day. And the biggest bonus: I’m going to get out of here in time to see the Spring this time.

My biggest complaint (to myself) is how busy I am. I have a minimum of four Zooms per day. Two are permanent weekday commitments. I have a Silent Zoom writing session each morning at 9:15 with my esteemed London writing buddy Liz: throughout this pandemic, it’s consistently been one of the most productive hours of my day; I have a Zoom workout with Barry at 11:00 or 11:30: I’m doing some Tae Kwon Do again to spice up the exercising. I teach writing every Wednesday for Rainbow Lifelong Learning Institute. And then I might have a board meeting or an LGBTQ elders get together or the job of running a panel for a huge online lesbian literary festival or a Zoom/phone call with Sue in London or Schweid in Barcelona or Jaya in Italy or Kaz in Bristol or Sarah in Dublin or Yael in Israel or Verandah in Vermont or Vicki in New York or Melsen in Hudson or or or.

Today marks a full year since I met any human other than Barry unmasked and undistanced. The only other four walls I’ve been inside have been those of doctors’ offices. I will be fully vaccinated on April 12th. I do not know what life will look like in a world with ever-evolving viral mutations.

But I do know that my first excursion will be to the Dollar Store. The next day I’ll go to the podiatrist. The day after that I’ll be off with Barry for two days to a hotel on the Cape. Two whole days seems bold enough for a first outing. I cannot yet see past that moment.

I should have posted this yesterday, but I seem to be running on "pandemic time."

Uncle Frank: Film Review in 110 Words

A perfect Pandemic film, Uncle Frank propels us away from our present stress and drops us into 1973. Innocent Beth goes north to attend NYU where her Uncle Frank teaches. She discovers that he lives with his life-partner Wally. Via a road trip, they all end up back in the South for the funeral of Frank’s nasty-assed father (Beth’s grandfather) and the site of Frank’s devastatingly traumatic first teenage love. It is sometimes tough to watch, especially if you grew up with a vicious parent, and the joyful ending is excessive. The acting is superb, the film is often funny, and I highly recommend its bittersweet portrayal of loving support.

The trailer: