Author: whodeanny

Mitt Romney, Come on Down!

 

I’m
excited to watch the Republican National Convention over the next few days. It
seems odd to consider the range of very different interests Mitt Romney needs to
attend in Tampa to enhance his chances of winning the Presidency. I’d say the
GOP needs to thread the needle but most needles only have one hole. Team Romney
has an awful lot to do in just a few days.

 

Mitt
Romney needs to appeal to his base, particularly evangelicals and social
conservatives who distrust him for his previous apostasies on a whole host of
issues. At the same time, Romney needs to present himself as a compassionate
conservative to the independents and moderates who think folks like Todd Akin
represent the true core of the GOP these days. Mitt tried to convince
CBS that the President is irrelevant regarding abortion policy.  He’s hoping to deflect attention from abortion
(and ‘women’s issues’ more generally) because he’s stuck in a horrible spot on
that issue. (This is in part because of his own struggles
to develop a coherent position on abortion. And stick
with it.)

 

Even
though George W. Bush happily talked about himself as America’s CEO, it’s
Romney that really fits the description. He’s trying to convince America that
his corporate experience puts him ahead of President Obama as a potential
economic savior. But Mitt embodies all the negative stereotypes of the 1% too.
His Gore-like woodenness and helmet hair enhance the images of him as an
automaton. The reluctance of his campaign to reveal more information about his
taxes also helps move Romney’s image from hard working entrepreneur to robber
baron. The gap between those images is massive.

 

My
guess is that in reality, Romney’s probably a staid but wonderful person.
Nobody outside his inner circle is quite sure of that though. And unfortunately
for him, the typical strategies used to soften a politician all carry a high
price tag. Talking too much about his family life immediately brings up
Mormonism. Talking about his all-American upbringing calls to mind the overwhelming
advantages of his early privilege. Talking about the personal obstacles he’s
overcome will, uh, well, they’ll get back to us on that one.  Overall, it’s gonna be tough to convince
average folks that Mitt ‘gets it’. Today, CBS describes this as the empathy gap
as its polling shows
that “only 41 percent of Americans
said Romney understands their needs and problems”.  Ouch.

 

Problems
need solutions. While candidate Obama was often criticized for being so focused
on hope and change, his themes were clear and consistent. I really have no idea
what Mitt Romney wants to do if elected President.

 

Okay,
so he wants to cut the deficit. He’s willing to cut programs. (Just not the
ones you like.) He wants to save Medicare. His plan doesn’t sound like it will
actually do that in a way that resembles Medicare. And he’s also focusing on
making America great. Or maybe proud. Or maybe proud of its greatness. Sigh. That
worked for Reagan because the country was dramatically different in 1980. And
Reagan made people feel better. Romney struggles to make people feel at all.

 

So
this week Romney has to create buzz about moving the country in HIS direction,
not just a different direction. This week and this year should be about
competing visions of America but I don’t know that this will happen. Romney
should have already learned that defeating weak incumbents can be done but only
if you demonstrate that what you offer is something people genuinely want.

 

Maybe
that’s the biggest reason I want to watch this convention unfold. I am very
interested to discover what Romney thinks America wants for its future.

 

 

FDO

 

 

 

Blood Red

 

Barbed wire paraphernalia

Wraps tightly across my heart

A thousand-thousand tiny pricks of pain

Soaking my whole world red

With the fresh heat of oxygen

fired flame portending

the sudden relief

of cool still emptiness

and rusting wires

 

 © Gayle Force Press 2012

 

 

Six Weeks Fallen

 

 

The once sturdy oak

Now exists in trio

Oddly mangled logs on the ground

It has yielded its form

To become a different kind of conduit

No longer a respite for birds

It shelters a thin, shedding snake

Some small colony of ants

Leaf chewing grubs

All while wearing a brand new crown

Of white, spreading flower

Perfectly fit to the majesty

Of a still sturdy oak

 

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2006

 

 

Love at First Sight

 

Seven decades ago, a frightened young girl named Nina saw the tallest, greenest statue she could imagine. The statue held some sort of lantern and little Nina was transfixed in its light. While everyone around her began jumping and shouting, Nina stayed quiet and perfectly still as her eyes remained focused on the lantern and pulled in all the light they could hold. When the ancient boat finally stopped moving after weeks of rough passage across the Atlantic, Nina’s mother had to pull her arm, hard, to break the lantern’s spell.

 

 

Five years later, Nina began working, helping to sew gowns at the Catholic hospital on the Lower East Side. She could hardly wait to bring her first wages home to the tenement where she lived with her mother, stepfather and little brothers. Nina knew how much Mamma and Papa Tony could use the extra money. She only held back one quarter from her wages.

 

 

After six weeks of hard work, aching fingers, teenage longing and two bits at a time, Nina walked nineteen blocks out of her way to find the storefront that sold the tallest, greenest Statue of Liberty bank in all of New York City.  Nina now knew that the light she’d fallen in love with was called a torch and that the torch on her new bank was a simple piece of wood, painted and glued onto the plastic. But pulling the torch, just a little, opened the back of the statue, just enough.

 

 

Over the years, Nina stuffed her bank with a few paper dollars then a letter from Korea stamped USMC then a postcard from a small college in Ohio then a picture of her first grandchild. For six decades, the statue bank held Nina’s hopes for the future and dreams of the past.  

 

 

Even now, the statue remains unbroken and its light is reflected in our memories of Nina. 

 

 

Writing Down the Waves

 

I started writing down the waves

Because of the first girl I knew I loved

She had mentioned sonnets to me

just an hour before

 

My parents always took the coast route

instead of the interstate bypass

Which annoyed me every day before this one

But that day Shelley saw Petrarch’s Cleaners’

On a fading cursive painted sign

 

She began to tell me about the Petrarchan sonnets

she’d learned about in school

Since Shelley was a year older

and two grades above mine

It happened pretty often that she became

the way I tumbled

Into some new mystery

secret piece of information

 

This time seemed different though

As she began singing out the lines that she remembered

from the poem sharing my new discovery

like she hoped the wind would carry her voice

From Maryland’s craggy coast to Petrarch’s grave

 

I sat amazed and open hearted

Stunned that this lovely girl could exult

so much in this poem

Never noticing the grinding seat belt

across her ribs

 

When an hour later

Dad finally stopped to get snacks for us

Shelley and I huddled under the blanket

uncomfortably

Both trying to pretend

That we weren’t dying to kiss one another

So to break the silence

I asked her


To sing the poem again

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2002

 

 

 

 

Triple Digit Temps

 

On days this hot, I sometimes reflect on my mom's experiences working in a laundry.

 

One of the plants she worked in was a giant, industrial facility that specialized in uniforms. All summer long, my mom and the other women (at least at the time, this was still very much ‘women’s work’) baked in a giant brick edifice that contained dozens of megamachines. The washers and dryers were vastly oversized and designed to rid work clothes of their odors, stains and wrinkles. 

 

If you’ve ever spent time in a crowded Laundromat or even a self-contained home laundry room, you have some beginning sense of the temperatures laundry machines can generate on a small scale. Now magnify that output while considering the scale of dozens of these megamachines running 10 hours straight. In the summer, in an all brick building, with no external ventilation. 6 days a week.

 

These women worked for just above minimum wage and many of them suffered fainting spells (and worse) from heat exhaustion, dehydration and heat stroke. And unless one of her children fell ill, my mom made her way to this plant every day for years.

 

Eventually, she received a (long overdue) promotion and moved to a different physical facility.  She made a point of insisting that one of the other employees become her assistant, so someone else could leave that plant too.  I’m continually grateful that Mom endured so much to help my dad provide for my sisters and me.

 

And I promise not to whine about the heat today.

 

 

FDO

A Sighting of Chelsea

 

Chelsea ran away as I tried to take her picture again.

 

We are going to end up with a lot of blurry sightseeing photos. Few of the marvels of Vienna will be documented appropriately. Too bad she got that awful haircut right before the trip. I bought her a hat from a street vender but I don’t know that it helped much.

 

I was upset when we got home because the only picture she’d let me frame was the one of the benches where I proposed. No Chelsea, just benches.

 

We could never afford a honeymoon so we always thought of that trip as our grand adventure. Too bad we were stuck in Lansing instead.

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2012

 

 

 

Summer’s Sky

 

Relegating another spring

To the caves of memory

This new summer has begun to settle

With its calm, stilling heat

Past my mind and into my flesh

I darken steadily so as to glow

Imperceptibly richer being filled with light

and warmth transmuted and sanctified

By my only temple

 

 

This ground beneath me

Beginning to bake then break

Its well hidden secrets

Long for their sacred moment of revelation

 

 

And today this glorious summer’s sky

Reminds me of picnics and parades,

Baseball games and the blessing

Of times gone by

When lying in grass and losing

Myself in the sky was a habit

Not a vice

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2004

 

 

Modern Skies

 

I want new constellations tonight

since dippers and belts and crowns and crabs 

are far too antiquated

to make me point with wonder

at the night sky’s lights

 

 

I think I need dollar signs

Logos and ampersands to fill me

with the open eyed interest 

of ancient Greece

and childhood 

 

 

© Gayle Force Press 2012

 

 

The Michael Jordan Finals MVP Award

 

Yesterday, I suggested that the NBA honor its greatest champion by changing the name of the league title to the Bill Russell Trophy. As good an idea as that is, it causes a potential conundrum because the Bill Russell Finals MVP Award is already given to an individual for his Finals performance. As I mentioned yesterday, the idea of a Finals specific MVP came about in 1969 so Russell never won the award. I think a sound argument can be made that the award would be more appropriately named after Michael Jordan.

 

Jordan after all won 6 Finals MVPs and is widely considered the greatest individual player in league history.[i] Jordan, like Russell, is an important enough figure that the trophy would retain its distinction. In fact, among the fans to whom the NBA consistently markets, this move would be considered an elevation in status.

 

Now if we could convince Russell and Jordan to share the stage and deliver the trophies together… WOW!

 

 

FDO

 

 

[i] While I disagree with that contention, I understand why people (especially those 40 and under) believe it true.