As I won't be blogging tomorrow, I am sending my Holiday Greetings out today. Those who know me might also know that I am no longer an adherent to any religion and I often find the Christmas holiday to be a mixed bag, to put it mildly.
People who otherwise have no religious affiliation or who are Christian in name only, make a big deal of the holiday, or should I say worship mainly at the Church of Consumerism for the holiday. I don't know. Perhaps Christmas is just more of a secular holiday than a religious one. In any case I am not inclined to celebrate it in either its religious or its secular aspect. BUT....
... My Italian-American heritage has left me with Catholic DNA in my make-up and so often the Italian and the Catholic are so intimately entwined as to be indistinguishable. There are innate urges, like those of the swallows that must return to Capistrano, that make me do things like make cookies and other holiday foods.
I was thinking how, on Christmas Eve, in Catholic tradition, we were not to eat meat. In response to that directive, Italians invented the Feast of Seven Fishes, the evening (or day long) meal for the Vigilia di Natale, Christmas Eve that consisted of several (not necessarily seven) fish dishes.
I don't remember any reference to "seven" fishes when I was growing up but dad's mother always made bacala (salted cod that had to be soaked for days in water) and pesce stock (a dried, unsalted cod) as well as anchovies in fried bread (pizza fritta) and calamari in tomato sauce. Mom would make fried smelts and capitone, a large eel. So I can only come up with six! When we would have Christmas Eve at my house, I always made baked stuffed shrimp (7). But we never had all seven fishes in one meal.
My recent trip to Sprouts Market made me abandon all hope of having even one fresh fish entree for tonight ($$$). Besides, fresh seafood in New Mexico is suspect. We may have a chunk of breaded fish from the freezer section of Costco. And I have some bread dough and anchovies to fry. I do like the pizza fritta con alice (pronounced al-ee-chay).
As my days during Covid are pretty much occupied with some kind of health care appointment or another, grocery shopping (often curb-side pick-up) and my hobby:cooking, food is, fortunately or unfortunately, a recurring theme. Add gardening, more food, in season. So I make pasta, sauce, bread, cake, cookies. I can't help myself.
So on to Christmas dinner tomorrow. We invited four of our neighbors (Denise, Heather, Bruce and Katie) and will serve antipasto, homemade ravioli (I made 72 ravioli the other day, they're in the freezer) with meat sauce, beef-turkey meatballs, Italian sausage, salad, homemade bread, wine, coffee cake (mom's recipe for "Jewish" Coffee Cake with my substituting plain yogurt for the sour cream in the recipe) and ice cream. Maybe some aperitif or cordials. Leon bought whisky for Bruce.
It won't be elegant as I don't do elegant very well. It will be Italian-peasant-festive style.
Yes, I had to sample a slice of the coffee cake to be sure it was good enough for company.
We don't have a tree indoors but the pinon outside is decked out with found objects, Mardi Gras beads, old plastic baubles, ribbons and pine cones. Leon threw up some lights and I put out the "one-piece" Nativity set. I don't know how others find the energy to decorate, or enjoyment in decorating to the hilt for the Christmas holiday. I'm always relieved to put it all back in the garage and "get back to normal" after the New Year holiday.
The BVM belonged to mom...she survived the big windstorm last week that brought down half the huge juniper tree she has called her shrine for the past 6 years.
My all-in-one Nativity (before the wise men arrived)
So much for that. So here's my Holiday Greeting Card(s):
I made these 11"x14" cards for my cousin Rose, a teacher, now retired, about 35-40 years ago. She would use them in her classroom for singing the 12 Days of Christmas. She also brought them to family gatherings at the holidays to aid in the sing-a-long that she loved to lead. She recently sent them back to me after cleaning out her teaching materials.
So here's wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Delightful Twelve Days.
Blogger: It’s not letting me post replies to individual comments on my own blog. This has been going on for sometime and I’m not sure how to fix it or if it can be fixed. Just one more reason for my frustration with blogging in general. I had wanted to reply to Russ’s comment. Yes it was a generalization about Congress being spineless. It was a lazy generalization on my part. But if half the vertebrae are missing the rest of the spine isn’t much good. That’s the best I can come up with that this hour of the morning.
We are having a little bit of weather here in New Mexico. Power is out. Internet is down. Using the cell phone to post this.
On the Anniversary of the Sandy Hook tragedy we are reminded not only of the lives lost there nine years ago, but of the hundreds, no thousands, of lives lost to gun violence since then; and we are reminded that the United States Congress has refused to adequately, meaningfully, responsibly address the issue of gun violence and the almost unregulated access to guns in this country.
Some possible actions to reduce the access to guns and hold gun owners responsible for their choice to own guns could be passed in the legislature immediately. High cost liability insurance for one - making insurance companies set a price for insuring the gun owner against loss of life, limb or property; tracking devices; buy-back cash for guns; banning assault weapons completely. I'm sure there are other solutions that have been put out there.
I am reminded that there was a game called "Lawn Darts" and that some child died when struck by a sharp dart. Lawn darts were soon banned. Completely banned: According to Wikipedia:
In April 1987, seven-year-old Michelle Snow was killed by a lawn dart
thrown by one of her brothers' playmates in the backyard of their home
in Riverside, California, when the dart had penetrated her skull and caused massive brain trauma.[9]
The darts had been purchased as part of a set of several different lawn
games and were stored in the garage, never having been played before
the incident occurred.[9]
Snow's father David began to advocate for a ban on lawn darts, claiming
that there was no way to keep children from accessing lawn darts short
of a full ban,[9][10] and, partly as a result of Snow's lobbying, on December 19, 1988 the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission introduced an outright ban on lawn darts in the U.S.[11] In the previous eight years, 6,100 Americans had visited hospital emergency rooms as the result of lawn-dart accidents. Of that total, 81% were 15 or younger, and half were 10 or younger.
But of course there was no Lawn Dart Lobby; no campaign money in the millions of dollars coming from the Lawn Dart Industry. There was no money to incentivize legislators to override a ban. Instituting the ban cost nothing.
They say that they hold life sacred, especially unborn life; but they stand by and look the other way as children, teachers, students, movie goers, shoppers, bar patrons are gunned down. It is unconscionable.
I remember seeing West Side Story back in 1961 or '62. I was 13/14. I think the movie was rated for "Mature Audiences" and the Catholic Legion of Decency (ugh) rated it "Unobjectionable for Adults" but somehow I got in to see it. Probably with a couple of my friends from Catholic school. I thought it was great and it has always been my favorite musical.
I think "Officer Krupke" is my favorite number in the soundtrack, followed by "Cool" - I must have harbored secret delinquent tendencies.
Or did I know at some level that it was the creation of "four jewish gay men" as stated in the first video below?
ABC 20/20 did an hour special last evening on Steven Spielberg's new re-make of West Side Story which was a fascinating look behind the scenes with interviews with Spielberg, Rita Moreno and several of the actors. What struck me was how all the members of the cast are just such nice, warm, intelligent, likable people.
I am contemplating suspending COVID caution to see the new production when it comes out...but that seems too risky right now...I will likely wait...till...
Here are some videos of the 20/20 episode that aired last night...I think these three videos are the complete show.
A new Netflix movie for the holidays - "Single All The Way" - is cute and sentimental, and a little hokey and has a plot that seems familiar. Not a blockbuster but a nice light Rom-Com to get your mind off of the daily news of COVID, violence and politics. Here's the trailer:
I could offer a commentary (like what the movie would have been like had Nick brought Peter home to his family instead) but I'll let you all decide for yourselves whether it rings your sleigh bells.
This is Sigourney Weaver as Debra Moorehouse, a character loosely (?) based on Louise Hay, I believe.
And if you've never seen the movie "Jeffrey" with Patrick Stewart, Sigourney Weaver, Steven Weber, Michael T. Weiss, Olympia Dukakis et al. give yourself a treat and watch. It's worth the $2.99 rental fee on YouTube.
World AIDS Day was December 1, and I've had an opportunity to read posts here and there about those whose lives were lost and the Reagan era's completely ignoring the crisis in the 80s and, well, got to thinking about some other aspects of those years. I was recently directed to a contemporary podcast that was all kinds of positive thinking and healing and praying and I remembered Louise Hay and how so many gay men gravitated to her and her lovely, but toxic, message. Google offered this article that I will share here.
And just to be clear I am more of the mindset that "If You Meet the Buddha, On The Road, Kill Him" (reference to the Book by Sheldon Kopp)
On August 30, 2017, Louise Hay died. Hay was a
metaphysical healer who began her journey in healing at the First Church
of Religious Science in the late 1960s. Her first publication was a
1976 pamphlet that came to be called, “Heal Your Body.” She became a
best-selling author and publisher in the 1980s in the midst of the AIDS
crisis.
I became familiar with Hay’s work in 1988 when I took a second,
part-time job to survive the trickle-down economy of that era. I loved
my second job. I was a clerk in a gay-owned bookstore in the Castro
District of San Francisco called The Love That Dares. I’m not sure I
knew of Louise Hay before that moment, but it became apparent that the
store sold Hay’s material more than anything else. The customers buying
her books and cassette tapes were gay men hoping to survive the AIDS
epidemic, looking for answers or seeking hope.
Even then, Hay had her detractors. Her solutions were not scientific
and blamed disease not on viruses or cells gone amok, but on behavior
and negativity. In You Can Heal Your Life she wrote, “I believe we create every so-called illness in our body.”1
This is, of course, problematic, and carries with it the insinuation
that you are sick because you are not trying hard enough to make
yourself well.2
In 1988, Los Angeles Times journalist Beth Ann Krier interviewed Dr. Michael Gottlieb for a piece about Hay.
Gottlieb was one of the physicians who had originally identified AIDS
in 1981. He stated, “As a physician, I think that love and acceptance
and forgiveness may well be an important component of healing, but AIDS
is a viral disease caused by a virus and not by lack of love.” For Hay,
lack of self-love was at the center of illness and the center of
healing. According to “The List” of dis-eases (as she called them) first
published in Heal Your Body in 1982, and then updated for
inclusion in her other works, the probable causes of AIDS included
“[f]eeling defenseless and hopeless,” and “[s]exual guilt.”3
I have a great deal of skepticism about anything that smacks of
cult-like thinking and a great deal of anger about “cures” that blame
the victims. Of course, blaming victims wasn’t new in the 1980s; it has a
long history. In 1747, John Wesley first published a self-help medical
guide that began by blaming disease on sin. At first, man “knew no sin,
so he knew no pain, no sickness, weakness, or bodily disorder.” But
following the original sin, “The seeds of weakness and pain, of sickness
and death, are now lodged in our inmost substance.”4
For Wesley, it was not unconditional love that was the cure, however,
but a course of medicine, rest, and “that Old unfashionable Medicine,
Prayer.”5
In a self-help book first published in 1803 and entitled, Advice
to Mothers, on The Subject of Their Own Health; and of the Means of
Promoting the Health, Strength, and Beauty of their Offspring,
William Buchan placed the blame of miscarriage squarely on women’s
behavior. He advised pregnant women to “be doubly attentive to preserve
the utmost sweetness and serenity of temper … and to keep every other
unruly passion or desire under the steady control of mildness and
reason.” Pregnant women should not be ruled by fear, he cautioned. While
they might be alarmed by stories about the dangers of pregnancy, cases
of “miscarriage or of death” were rare and “owing to the improper
conduct of women themselves.”6
14th annual Lesbian and Gay Pride parade in New York, June 27, 1983. (Mario Suriani/Associated Press)
While statements like these make my blood boil, as a resident of the
Castro in the late 1980s, I also realize that people like Hay gave dying
men a rope to cling to. It is important to remember that in that era,
there was little else. The pharmaceutical giant, Burroughs-Wellcome,
patented AZT in 1985 and it was approved as a treatment for AIDS by the
Food and Drug Administration in 1987. However, for many men, AZT proved
toxic, particularly in the doses in which it was administered, and, by
itself, AZT is not enough to prevent HIV or death from AIDS.
Additionally, government on all levels was largely ignoring the AIDS
epidemic because of the stigma of a disease predominantly presenting
itself among gay men and intravenous drug users.
In 1983, Pat Buchanan, then communications director for Ronald Reagan, had called AIDS
“nature’s revenge on gay men.” Only six years into the AIDS crisis, in
June 1987, had President Ronald Reagan’s administration finally
established a presidential commission on HIV/AIDS, while still largely
shying away from public discussions of the disease. In 1988, on the
floor of the Senate, Jesse Helms defended an appropriations bill
amendment that kept funding from AIDS education by stating, “You have got to call a spade a spade, and a perverted human being a perverted human being.”
Add to this neglect and hatred by government, the neglect and hatred
of society. Discrimination against gay men was the societal norm and
many families disowned their sons when they came out as gay or bisexual
and HIV+. Those who survived that era recount that neglect. In a 2003 interview with Mark Harrington,
one of the leading members of the New York AIDS Coalition to Unleash
Power’s Treatment and Data subcommittee, Sarah Schulman asked, “[W]ere
people surprised that people could suffer and die and their families
never show up?” Harrington replied, “I was. But, I also — remember, the
context of ACT UP was also this incredible homophobia of the Reagan
years, and this incredible, sort of, hatred and disgust of gay people.
So, given that all those things were going on in the broader society,
those parents were part of that hatred of gay people.”
In the midst of this neglect and hatred, many of the men I knew who
were infected with HIV looked in many directions for a solution. My
friend Phil, one of the members of the affinity group to which I
belonged, and with whom I protested in front of the U.S. Supreme Court
on October 13, 1987, was a member of a macrobiotic society. Phil swore
that the combination of coming out to his family and a macrobiotic diet
was making him better. In one of our affinity group’s first meetings, he
told us that the thrush from which he had suffered had disappeared, and
that he felt healthier than he had in years.
While Hay blamed the ill for their illnesses, she also preached love.
“Louise Hay, an advocate for unconditional love and forgiveness during
the height of the AIDS crisis, died peacefully Wednesday morning of
natural causes,” is the first line of Hay’s obituary in the LGBT Los Angeles Blade. In a blog called, “My Fabulous Disease,”
Mark S. King wrote that Hay’s “message of self-love and unconditional
acceptance—of our lives and other people—resonated like a beacon to the
frightened gay men of Los Angeles.”
It was in Los Angeles in 1987 that the Hay Rides started, gatherings
of people with AIDS, mostly gay men, looking for an answer or, at the
very least, loving human contact. Some came away from the Hay Rides in
despair, but others came away with self-love that was hard to find as a
gay man in the 1980s. As Hay wrote, “Often what we think of as the things ‘wrong’ with us are only our experiences of our own individuality.”7 This message, alone, was a powerful one.
The End, but Not the End I Meant to Write
Over the last two months, I have thought a lot about Louise Hay and
her legacy. When I conceived of this piece, I thought my conclusion
would be a mixed one: that blaming the ill was harmful, but that,
perhaps, for some of the sick and dying the good of being loved and
touched in an era marked by hatred and loathing outweighed that harm. I
was almost finished writing and thought I would ruminate over the
conclusion while I walked the dogs, coming back mid-morning to write
that there was bad and good.
Before heading out the door with my furry companions, I checked
Facebook. In response to a righteous rant from a young friend of mine,
there was this reply, “I believe the words ‘sexual assault’ and ‘sexual
harassment’ are thrown out way too loosely. Victim mentality is the
problem and that’s the real issue. You can only be a victim if you allow
yourself to be one. Regardless of who you are. Man, woman, gay,
straight, etc.”
Reading those words, so stark on my screen, I thought: No. Louise Hay
did more harm than good. Building an industry on the message that
“DIS-EASE CAN BE HEALED, IF WE ARE WILLING TO CHANGE THE WAY WE THINK
AND BELIEVE AND ACT!” perpetuates the cultural belief that harm is chosen, consciously or unconsciously.8
People have AIDS because of denial of self. Brain tumors are caused by
refusing to change old patterns. Women are raped because they act like
victims. For decades we have tried to rid ourselves of those ideas with
little, or no, success.
Less than a month after Hay’s death David Groff published a piece for Slate entitled, “How Louise Hay’s Spiritual Pseudoscience Harmed a Generation of Gay Men.”
Although Groff acknowledged that Hay “offered open if judgmental arms,”
he concluded that, “The last thing people with AIDS needed to hear was
that they had caused their own illness.”
My friends who lived and died before the era of effective treatment
reached for visualization, meditation, diet, vitamins, and snake oil. In
some cases, they survived the early years of the plague, and in others,
they did not. There were no magical outcomes. Those who caught the
virus are not to be blamed for their illness. Those who did not survive
are not to be blamed for their deaths. There is still stigma, but
activists and medical health professionals have worked to rid our
society of that. Perhaps some of the dying needed Hay’s love in the
1980s. If only she could have offered it without blame.
Notes
Louise L. Hay, You Can Heal Your Life Gift Edition (Hay House, 1999), 151. Return to text.
William Buchan, Advice to Mothers, on the Subject
of their Own Health; and on the Means of Promoting the Health,
Strength, and Beauty, of their Offspring (London: T. Caddell and W. Davies, 1811), 31-32. Return to text.
Hay, You Can Heal Your Life, 101. Emphasis in the original. Return to text.
Ibid., 239. The shouting caps are in the original. Return to text.
