So Let's Be Brave

we will defy both 

gravity / geography

then go back to brave

Just you and I “Defying Gravity” soars Cynthia Erivo with an assist from Ariana Grande. “Together, we’re unlimited / Together, we’ll be the greatest team there’s ever been.”  Like teenagers refusing parental grounding, we’ll take this chance and fly.  Applause.  Curtsies. 

Naomi Shihab Nye inks a short children’s poem quite right for today’s grownup kids. Incorrectly piecing together a “Torn Map,” she tapes mountains and water in new places.  What if we could alter topography for the heart’s sake?  “I’d tear a map / and be right next to you.” 

We sit together. 

 Jane Fonda and JB Pritzger deliver joint addresses for everyone everywhere.  Their grasp of this dangerous moment and their abilities to communicate it—their mutual belief in the power of kindness and empathy to both endure and defeat tyranny.  Fonda: “We are in our documentary moment. It is not a rehearsal….  So let’s be brave.”  Pritzger: “The root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed….  Seeds of Nazis started with everyday Germans looking for someone to blame.” 

Active in the Civil Rights Movement, vocal in her opposition to the Vietnam War thereby earning the denigrating nickname ‘Hanoi Jane,” and recently arrested multiple times while protesting climate change at the U. S. Capitol.  Fonda made her first movie in 1958 and won a 1971 Oscar for her portrayal of Bree Daniels in “Klute.”  Her finest performance, however, may well be her February 23rd acceptance speech of the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.  She explains that for actors “our job is to understand another human being,” and she emphasizes that the acting profession also teaches the value of unions and the First Amendment.  Fearing the devastation coming for so many from the wickedness of this country’s new regime, Fonda begs: “And even if they’re of a different political persuasion, we need to call upon our empathy and not judge, but listen from our hearts and welcome them into our tent because we are going to need a big tent to resist, successfully, what’s coming at us.”  The award winner concludes: “We must stay in community.  We must help the vulnerable.  We must find ways to project an inspiring vision for the future – one that is beckoning, welcoming, that will help people believe.”  

Illinois Governor JB Pritzger speaks at his State of the State Address on February 19th: “I do not invoke the specter of Nazis easily.”  From a Jewish family of Ukrainian descent, he recalls the 1978 Nazi threat to march against Holocaust survivors living in Skokie, Illinois.  Those survivors hastily built a small Holocaust museum and rallied growing support.  Deciding to march in Chicago instead, 20 Nazis showed up—confronting 2,000 counter-protestors, their 10-minute “rally” fizzled out.  Pritzger understands too well the “authoritarian playbook” that allowed the Third Reich’s ascent in Germany.  “The seeds of distrust, hate started with everyday Germans looking for someone to blame.”  Everyday Americans must learn from our moment.  Similarities between this country now and Nazi Germany then both horrify and instruct us.  Who did the White House immediately suppose at fault for the plane crash in the Potomac River?  A DEI hire—diversity caused this tragedy?  Pritzger warns how easy it is for the dissatisfied to “blame people who don’t look like you.”  The dismantling of a constitutional republic took the Nazis “one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and forty minutes.”  Keep asking, he demands, “what comes next?”  Uproot dictatorship’s seeds.  “Gather your justice and humanity.”  Call out lies.  Demand accountability.  “Democracy requires courage.”

We sit together. 

“No honking in the drive thru please,” a sign at the pharmacy window commands.  “You have no idea!” reports and repeats the employee to me.  A song and a poem to the rescue. 

  Pick up a prescription for Ani DiFranco’s “Revolutionary Love” from her home studio.  Nothing like a little reverb and Poncho’s bark.  Activist DiFranco learned that the cure for her grief-fraught anger lay in showing herself mercy and respect.  That’s it.  My self—my job.  Evil can be countered only by good.  “I will see no stranger / Only parts of myself I don’t know yet.”  My self—my job.   “And if you give me your story / I will hold it in my hands.”      

photo: m f valentine

James Wright stops his car in sweet twilight.  A pair of bowing ponies welcome two travelers into their pasture.  These loving animals, grazing and munching clumps of spring offerings, bestow on us “A Blessing.”  Nuzzling and caressing—horses and humans.  You?  Me? Drenched in flooding awareness “that if I stepped out of my body I would break / into blossom.”     

Two lifetimes of achievements.  We sit together.     

Howard University celebrates its freedom fighter alumna Roberta Flack with a glowing tribute.  Whew, the first time ever I heard her voice.  She sang as if she knew us—singing our lives with her words.  Seated on the piano bench edge, she begins “Killing Me Softly.”  She stands, the gentled microphone part of her hand, “singing clear and strong.”  Then.  She closes “Softly. Softly.”   

What a long, versatile, stellar career for Popeye Doyle aka Gene Hackman.   Please, another Oscar to him for his portrayal of basketball coach Norman Dale in “Hoosiers.”  Watch the ending of this highly-improbable comeback by his small-town Hickory Huskers in the 1952 Indiana State Championship game.  “I’ll make it,” Jimmy tells his coach.  Dale trusts him.  “Spread the floor, let’s go.” 

watched so many times

last second winning basket

tis i swishing it