Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Parker River Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island

The year I was born, 1947, Rachel Carson wrote a 23-page piece for the USA Department of Interior titled Parker River: A National Wildlife Refuge. You can access it here.

The first line reads: “The Parker River Wildlife Refuge is New England’s most important contribution to the national effort to save the water fowl of North America.” During my recent visit to the Refuge, nature proved Carson’s point. And as we drove down the main route, a flock of huge black birds suddenly occupied the leafless branches of the trees around us. A birder passing by identified them for us as crows. Crows apparently are not shy and were happy to be photographed. Later we saw blue birds and red birds and other migrating birds on their wise way to warmer climates.

The Refuge makes up much of Plum Island, which is 11 miles (4,662 acres) of barrier island north of Massachusetts’ Cape Ann. Conservation became a priority in 1679 when settlers’ livestock were stopped from ranging free on the island, eating up all the vegetation. The first house was built in 1752, but a bridge over the estuary separating it from the mainland was established in the early 1800s, mainly to service the new hotel. There is no longer a hotel on Plum Island, but the level of construction is slightly insane.

It used to be a neighborhood of beach cottages and as the years passed people added a room or a second floor or a big porch. Today, there is an alarming proliferation of McMansions, the more recent ones built on stilts, most of them massive and ugly, some of them four stories high. But the kicker is that many are built on the edge of the marsh, cutting off the view of the traditional cottages, throwing unwelcome shadows over multiple houses.

However, Parker River Refuge is the Island’s jewel and, in my opinion, should be considered one of the wonders of the world. Its undulating dunes, dramatic beaches, four rivers, bog, swamps, and the magnificent Great Marsh sit under a Big Sky. I first encountered a Big Sky when I was in Kenya in about 1996. Of all visual and physical experiences I have had while traveling, the Big Sky over Kenya’s Masai Mara ranks as my most euphoric. Likewise, here at the Refuge, the great expanse of over 3,000 acres of salt marsh with its waving grasses, crisscrossed with tidal pools, met the changing sky in an exhilarating view. I realized with a start that I was downright happy. I was breathless with a visceral joy that contrasted with my feelings these last years in which I’ve been living in basically one room watching the world suffer.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service has done a sublime job in making this huge Marsh and the acres of dunes accessible. They have built many handsome boardwalks, the majority with explicit accessibility, but all with smooth faux-wooden paths elevated above the marsh and the dunes. Some of the boardwalks climbed over the dunes and descended to the sea. Some wound through the high grasslands, with creeks underneath turning into puddles, and black water nourishing reeds. All of these boardwalks are beautifully done and took me to places I would never otherwise consider climbing up or scrabbling over. Even the observation tower was only three flights of steps and I was easily able to mount it.

The rolling dunes were decorated with thickets of beach plum (thus Plum Island!) and grasses. Between the dunes are black pines and eastern red cedar trees, which reminded me of eucalyptus trees with their shedding bark. The brilliance of the walkways is that they allow visitors to be closer and deeper in the dunes and marsh than one anticipates, without any damage to the environment.

On the other hand, the Joppa Flats Education Center and Wildlife Sanctuary, apparently operated by the Massachusetts Audubon Society, offered an unpaved road and heaps of garbage at its entrance. We turned around and went back into the Refuge instead of visiting it.

Another absolute treat was staying at the comfortable, luxurious Airbnb which the owner titled “My Dream house with views of the marsh and sunset.” I am a literal person and that is also literally my dream view. The apartment did not disappoint. It was a bit too cold to use the marsh-facing porch, but when sitting in the living room chairs, I looked straight out the sliding glass doors to the marsh and its sunsets. These are so stunning that car after car of locals pulled up to watch the sunset before going on their way.

A late November trip was just what the doctor ordered. There were few folks around. Even more important, we avoided the infamous summer greenhead flies. We didn’t have to deal with ticks, mosquitos, or poison ivy, all of which flourish in the summer. Plum Island is known as a gorgeous beach destination and becomes heavily congested, I was told. I’m not a big beach lass, but now I can’t live without the Great Marsh. So let the others stretch out on the exquisite plum sand. I’ll be visiting when I have these wonderlands more or less to myself.

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.

 

Ifé Franklin: The Slave Narrative of Willie Mae

Ifé Franklin has produced and directed this remarkable short film entitled The Slave Narrative of Willie Mae. These moving 20 minutes represent just three out of 17 scenes of the book, of the same title, on which it is based. The depth of the collaboration among multiple talented artists is impressive. Letta Neely, who edited Franklin’s volume of historical fiction (Wild Heart Press, 2018), also wrote the script for this film. The actors are riveting, not the least Qualina Lewis as Willie Mae, the young enslaved woman whom her mother, an elder aunt, and a sister field hand are preparing for escape. The multi-talented Michael Gordon Penn provides a frightening threat as the overseer. Their cooperative work together on this film mirrors the joint efforts of these women to save the youngest amongst them from the brutalities of Lenox Tobacco Plantation in 1852.

Ifé Franklin has combined community activism and a rich and outstanding variety of artistic expressions since high school, when she began to study photography. Over the years she has added many layers to her arts education and has produced an impressive range of installations and visual arts. Watch her short film here. Her hope is to bring the full story to the screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xSdDfMfcI4&ab_channel=If%C3%A9Franklin

 

Kahlo's ‘Pose’ at Brandeis University’s Rose

I’m on a mission to check out the many small museums in this area of Massachusetts. This rainy Saturday was the perfect timing for my first visit to the Rose Art Museum. Their modern and contemporary permanent collection is extraordinary – every piece of the highest quality. Stunners from one wall to another, with women and people of color now heavily represented.

Let’s talk first about the traveling exhibition of “POSE” which classifies it’s images by and about Frida Kahlo into these categories: “posing; composing; exposing; queering, and self-fashioning.” It includes a not inconsiderable array of photos and paintings, with captions that do an excellent job of contextualizing her courageous, if painful, life. It highlights her youthful cross-dressing, her bisexuality, and her radical politics. Available at Rose until December 19, 2021, it is sufficiently comprehensive to both introduce the uninitiated to Frida and to satisfy the hunger of her fans.

The rest of the surprisingly large exhibition halls are filled with a self-tribute on the occasion of the museum’s 60th anniversary. Although the original selection of work included only one woman six decades ago, the curators have used the juxtaposition of the best-known pieces with work by emerging artists. In their words: “Displaying well-known, iconic pieces from the Rose’s permanent collection alongside artworks created by emerging and historically underrepresented artists, this major, museum-wide exhibition recontextualizes the familiar while introducing the new. The show features a multigenerational, international cadre of stellar artists…”

The entrance floor, in particular, featured radical work by Black artists that was new to me, but blew me away. These were juxtaposed with select masterpieces by such artists as Louise Nevelson, Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol, to name a few. The pedophiles among superstars were named clearly, including mention of the 14-year-old girl Gauguin called his “wife” and used as a muse.

Beauford Delaney got only a fraction of the attention received by his contemporaries Picasso and Gauguin. An admired member of the Harlem Renaissance whose mother was born into slavery, Delaney was a mentor to James Baldwin. Both were gay. I felt lucky to be able to see his jazzy, vibrant piece “Abstraction,” set aside and contrasting with Picasso’s “Reclining Nude.”

“I Gets a Thrill Too When I sees De Koo” is a big, exuberant work by Robert Colescott, a frequently satirical African-American artist who studied in Paris with one of my very favorite artists, the Cubist Fernand Léger. He returned to the States determined to put Black images into art history. Meant to mock the famous “Woman” by de Kooning, the title also contains a reference to an Arabic swear word for a woman’s vagina. Colescott had spent several years living in Egypt. His original introduction to art as a teenager was watching Diego Rivera, the muralist husband of Frida Kahlo, paint a mural in San Francisco. Which brings us full circle.

In 2009, when the Recession seemed like the end of capitalism and donations to Brandeis’ constricted, the then-President Jehuda Reinharz announced that he was going to sell off some of the 7,500-piece collection and close the Rose Museum. People associated with the University went nutters, not the least those who had donated art. Litigation halted any sale of the artwork and the Rose Museum has spent the time since then healing the wounds from that controversy.

Throughout my entire visit, I felt super-aware of the profound wealth this collection represents and how copious are the privileges of students and teachers at these elite private colleges. At a time when most higher education institutions are in a kerfuffle over reduced enrollment, dealing with Covid, keeping angry professors as “adjuncts” with little security, these universities with massive endowments are, ironically, offering us artistic delights.

Danforth Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts

If I have learned anything during the pandemic, it is that eastern Massachusetts is filled with wonderful hidden pearls, especially the many parks and ponds I have discovered during my weekly Saturday explorations. Now that I am able to go inside museums, I’m trying to identify and visit the variety of little museums in surrounding towns.

The Danforth Museum in Framingham is housed on the second floor of the arts building of Framingham State University. Among the 3,500 objects in the permanent collection are the works of Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877 –1968.) Fuller was an African-American sculptor who was a protégée of Auguste Rodin and initially built her reputation in Paris. (Her self-portrait is above.) A contributor to the Harlem Renaissance, her work centers around injustice and struggle. Even her very studio is displayed at the Danforth along with about 100 pieces of her work.

There were other exhibitions to see as well. A recent acquisition by Mia Cross called “Another Girl Who Sat on the Couch Too Long” tickled me. Dana Filibert, one of the featured artists in a special exhibition called “Wonderscape,” showed many collaged pieces using repurposed objects, epoxy, carved foam, and paint (see below). Her unique art, she says, aims for “playful mischief.”

We were the only guests on a summer Saturday. Entry was $6 for seniors. The bathrooms were convenient and the air-conditioning was pumped way up (take a shirt or sweater to put on). I recommend searching out these little museums and galleries, especially if, like me, you are feeling that you have been heavily deprived of art for over a year.

Mid-Cape Cod Redux - May 2021

For my first vacation after 14 months of staying home, my pandemic partner Barry and I recreate our last trip to the same Hyannis Harbor Hotel, eating (outside) at the same nearby Black Cat Tavern, and driving to some of the same beauty spots. But it feels like a very different trip. We are figuring out when to mask. People are declaring themselves fully vaccinated before engaging in conversation. And we are experiencing a refreshed post-pandemic sense of freedom in the outdoors.

Heritage Museum and Gardens
We get advance tickets ($20) to the annual rhododendron festival – 100+ exquisite varieties! – at the Heritage Museum and Gardens in Sandwich. Besides the picturesque landscaping and the explosive colors of the blooms, my favorite amenity is the people-mover that continuously circles the 15-minute loop around the 100 acres of soft hills and steep inclines. There are seven stations to hop on and off which makes the entire Gardens accessible for those of us who want to save our steps for the “good parts.”

Dunbar Tea House
From there we go straight to Sandwich’s famous Dunbar Tea House where a crispy tender Duck Leg Confit has been added to the menu. The bad news is that the strawberry/rhubarb pie is sold out; the good news is that there is a pudding-like strawberry/rhubarb layered concoction to substitute. Barry’s Guinness Braised Short Rib Stew isn’t as tender as he would like, but we are both gratified by the outstanding service we receive at the hands of our server Elaine.

Bass Hole Boardwalk
Another day we return to perhaps my favorite spot on the Cape, the Bass Hole Boardwalk at Gray’s Beach in Yarmouth Port. Each plank of the long sturdy boardwalk is playfully inscribed – from celebrating a kid’s graduation to a 50th anniversary; from honoring a favorite pet to blowing kisses to a beau. On one side of the suspended boardwalk is an exquisite green salt marsh, unusually lush and grooved. On the other side is a long stretch of sandbars leading to the ocean, where fowl and kayaks intermingle. (Photo by Tammy Nolan)

Scargo Tower
Last time we tried to visit it, our drive up to the Scargo Tower was blocked for some sort of renovations. This time we actually see it. First constructed in 1874 by the Tobey family who hoped that its location atop the highest mid-Cape hill would turn it into a lucrative tourist attraction, the wooden structure was soon blown over in a gale. Once rebuilt, it burned down. Finally in 1901, a 30-foot version was assembled from cobblestones and surrounded by a parking lot, which the town of Dennis manages. They say that from atop the Tower the views reach from P-town to the Sagamore Bridge, but it looks like the Tower hasn’t been open for a long time. Stuck up there like a sore stone thumb, it seems quite the folly.

Hyannisport
I love driving around places I don’t know, sneaking up the “private, no trespassing” lanes of the one-percenters to see their mansions, sometimes gorgeous and often gross, and then winding through the streets of the neighborhoods of those who clean those mansions. Although I have never been an environmental activist of any sort, I do know about the problems of clean water faced by many on our planet, not the least the people of Palestine. So the acres and acres of bright green lawns surrounding the bloated homes in Hyannisport make me considerably crazed. Blocked access to the sea and security guards in giant pickup trucks telling us to “move along” when we try to momentarily stop near the yacht club for the view add to my irritation.

Spohr Gardens
We drive the loop to Falmouth before our departure in order to stop at the Spohr Gardens – I had never heard of it before. It was developed on 6 acres along Oyster Pond for over forty years by the owners Margaret and Charles Spohr. He was a high-flying civil engineer; she graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and served in the Army Nurse Corps. Charlie and Margaret, who were the ages of my parents, evolved these Gardens together.

Charlie added his growing collection of items he thought of as “decorations” – “planting” them throughout the gardens. Big metal bells, massive millstones, and giant old anchors predominate. His prized possession is well-displayed on the edge of Oyster Pond: it is reputed to be the 1760 anchor meant to be used on the H.M.S. Bounty (i.e. Mutiny on the Bounty), but left on shore for repairs. It is 14’ long and 2,476 pounds.

We run into a Trustee named Bill who talks to us for a long time about Spohr Gardens. He tells us that their old renovated cottage is rented out by the year – usually to rich city folks. His particular job at Spohr Gardens is preparing the Butterfly Habitat, and he points out the varied plants that serve as breeding grounds for the different butterflies. The whole estate was donated by the Spohrs as a Trust with funds to maintain it on the condition that it remain open every single day and be free to the public.

As we are leaving the Spohr Gardens we run into a couple who live nearby. They are watching an eagle’s nest on top of a tree on the other side of Oyster Pond and they lend us their binoculars (“We’re fully vaccinated,” he says as he hands me the binoculars) and tell us about the eagle and its wingspan of six feet! Then he tells us something spooky. That for the first time at the nearby Otis Airforce Base, bunches of paratroopers have lately been seen parachuting from low-flying military planes. The locals are mystified by why that is going on.

We climb the exit path lined with azaleas and hydrangeas and vow to return for the daffodil festival next April.

 

Photos via Barry Hock

 

Nakba Day 2021 - demonstrating at Copley Square

May 15 2021
Today’s Nakba / #FreePalestine demonstration in Boston in solidarity with the Palestinian people was heartening in these dark times for Gaza. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of mostly young people, many of them diaspora Palestinians. All the speakers except one were women, and all talked about how no one can be free until everyone is free. They called out for “Black liberation, Indigenous liberation, and queer liberation!” One speaker led a chant: Up with the Jewish people; down with the Zionists. My sign “Another Jew Against the Brutal Occupation of Palestine” was well received, with Palestinian youth asking to take selfies with me.

It was my first time in a crowd since Covid, and what a crowd! Packed, singing, chanting, passionate -- just amazing. It was noisy and high-energy and there was nowhere I more wished to be than in the midst of these young people with their intersectionality and vitality.

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."

Remembering dear Kay Bourne

The community has lost one of its most unique journalists, historians, and humanitarians – Kay Bourne. As the arts editor of Bay State Banner for many years, she met and interviewed every Black artist and dancer and writer and actor and playwright who passed through Boston – from the ascending to the legendary. She was admired by the entire arts community for her generosity and the depth of her commitment to artists of color. As Abe Rybeck (photo below), the founder of The Theatre Offensive and an international giant of queer theatre, said, “Kay was a great example of someone who used their privilege responsibly and creatively.” Abe also called her a “true mensch,” which is exactly what I felt when I first became friends with Kay.

Kay carved out this extraordinary space for herself and used her pen and remarkable personality to promote the many talented people who became her friends. She collaborated with some of them, notably shows about Black theatre that integrated essays by Kay with photos by her gifted bestie Craig Bailey.

Kay won copious awards and many honors – and she never failed to share the spotlight. At one major event she insisted that I set up a book display table with the talented Bonnie McIlvaine, another writer friend of hers, and she lauded both our work from the podium, encouraging people to get right over to our table to buy our books, as she accepted her honor.

Kay’s archives are a massive, precious history of the Black presence in the Boston arts scene and a testament to the depth and width of her respect for the talent of so many people, some of whom were being underpromoted and under-estimated.

I was often her driver, after she could no longer drive herself, and as a result I got to go to the most wonderful affairs. I hung out at her Brookline home a number of times, a temple to the many Black artists she supported.

And my house is full of the presents she sent me – books she thought I’d love and the most wonderful Jane Austen doll – my fave author. A Jane Austen doll!!

But I only learned of Kay’s death a couple of hours ago when her carer called me. “I used to read her mail to her,” the young woman told me, “and we would laugh over the cards you sent her.” I have the Valentine I got for Kay sitting right here on my desk, addressed, stamped, waiting for next week - too late - to be mailed. Goodbye, friend.