The Shadow of Sirius by W. S. Merwin

Source of book: I own this

 

I regret that I have been unable to acquire the Library of America edition of the complete Merwin, but it has become unobtanium. Fortunately paperback editions of some of his collections are still available. This is one of them. You can also find many of the poems at the Merwin Conservancy if you like. 

 

One of the benefits of our interconnected online world, for all its disadvantages, is the chance to connect with kindred spirits across the world. In one of those cases, a friend who moved from where I live to Florida met another person, who I met online through my friend. I then met another friend from that person, and we ended up getting together in person for hiking and backpacking, which we have done here and there over the last few years. And now, both are part of a poetry group we have started, complete with zoom meetings. 

 

One of the great things about this meeting has been being introduced to a number of modern poets that I have come to love. One of those is W. S. Merwin. 

My own poetry journey started very young, with my love for Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and Robert Frost. I also read quite a few of the other poets from the 19th Century and prior, because these show up in old anthologies that you can get at a thrift store for pennies. 

 

Discovering the more modern poets came later for me, and friends have been helpful in that discovery process. There is so much out there, and only one lifetime to read. 

 

Merwin was, like many of my favorite moderns, an ecologist as well as a poet. There is a strong connection between the poetic temperament and a closeness to our planet and the living biosphere. 

 

The Shadow of Sirius is one of his later books, from 2008. It won the Pulitzer. 

 

The poems are modern in form, with no punctuation, little capitalization, and mostly free forms. There are a few that lean in the direction of tradition, but are not quite there. They don’t feel particularly experimental, however, just a familiar modern verse form that relies on the skill of the poet in arranging meaning and sounds to create the magic of poetry. 

 

Here are the poems that particularly spoke to me from this collection. 

 

The Nomad Flute

 

You that sang to me once sing to me now
let me hear your long lifted note
survive with me
the star is fading
I can think farther than that but I forget
do you hear me

do you still hear me
does your air
remember you
o breath of morning
night song morning song
I have with me
all that I do not know
I have lost none of it

but I know better now
than to ask you
where you learned that music
where any of it came from
once there were lions in China

I will listen until the flute stops
and the light is old again

 

Any of us who are wanderers and filled with wonder at the natural world will enjoy this and many of the other poems in this collection. 

 

This next one is a definite favorite. As a writer and thinker, I am fascinated by how words work, and how they communicate meaning, yet always imperfectly. 

 

Note

 

Remember how the naked soul
comes to language and at once knows
loss and distance and believing

then for a time it will not run
with its old freedom
like a light innocent of measure
but will hearken to how
one story becomes another
and will try to tell where
they have emerged from
and where they are heading
as though they were its own legend
running before the words and beyond them
naked and never looking back

through the noise of questions

 

Here is another one on that theme. 

 

From the Start

 

Who did I think was listening

when I wrote down the words

in pencil at the beginning

words for singing

to music I did not know

and people I did not know

would read them and stand to sing them

already knowing them

while they sing they have no name

 

Do you collect stones? Do you ever wander on the beach and pick up small smooth ones that catch your fancy? I certainly do. This next poem may resonate. 

 

Lament for a Stone

 

The bay where I found you faced the long light

of the west glowing under the could sky

 

there Columba as the story goes looked

back and could not see Ireland any more

 

therefore he could stay he made up his mind

in that slur of the sea on the shingle

 

shaped in a fan around the broad crescent

formed all of green pebbles found nowhere else

 

flecked with red held in blue depths and polished

smooth as water by rolling like water

 

along each other rocking as they were

rocking at his feet it is said that they

 

are proof against drowning and I saw you

had the shape of the long heart of a bird

 

and when I took you in my palm we flew

through the years hearing them rush under us

 

where have you flown now leaving me to hear

that sound alone without you in my hand

 

I am also given to walking at night on moonless nights - one particular hike at Pinnacles National Park is a treasured memory. I find that even the stars cast shadows. 

 

Night with No Moon

 

Now you are darker than I can believe

it is not wisdom that I have come to

 

with its denials and pure promises

but this absence that I cannot set down

 

still hearing when there is nothing to hear 

reaching into the blindness that was there

 

thinking to walk in the dark together

 

This next one feels very personal, and it reminds me of my feelings for my beloved. The form of this one is reminiscent of a Pantoum or even a Villanelle, although it is not so structured as either.

 

Good Night

 

Sleep softly my old love

my beauty in the dark

night is a dream we have

as you know as you know

 

night is a dream you know

an old love in the dark

around you as you go

without end as you know

 

in the night where you go

sleep softly my old love

without end in the dark

in the love that you know

 

I find that poems with the theme of journeys, connection, longing, are ones I highlighted. Here is another. 

 

Into the Cloud

What do you have with you
now my small traveler
suddenly on the way
and all at once so far

on legs that never were
up to the life that you
led them and breathing with
the shortness breath comes to

my endless company
when you could come to me
you would stay close to me
until the day was done

o closest to my breath
if you are able to
please wait a while longer
on that side of the cloud

 

Here is another that was so good, I shared it on Facebook. A real gem.

 

Worn Words

The late poems are the ones
I turn to first now
following a hope that keeps
beckoning me
waiting somewhere in the lines
almost in plain sight

it is the late poems
that are made of words
that have come the whole way
they have been there

 

I do often find that the later poems written by my favorite poets are often the ones I return to. Thomas Hardy’s Winter Words, for example, is so good. 

 

Another one about words and meaning and the music of language

 

The Long and the Short of It

 

As long as we can believe anything

we believe in measure

we do it with the first breath we take

and the first sound we make

it is in each word we learn

and in each of them it means

what will come again and when

it is there in meal and in moon

and in meaning it is the meaning

it is the firmament and the furrow

turning at the end of the field

and the verse turning with its breath

it is in memory that keeps telling us

some of the old story about us

 

And another, which combines the love of words and the love of nature. 

 

What the Bridges Hear

 

Even the right words if ever

we come to them tell of something

the words never knew

celestia for starlight

or starlight for starlight

so at this moment there may be words

somewhere among the nebulae

for the two bridges cross the wide

rock-strewn river

part way around the bend from each other

in the winter sunlight

late in the afternoon more than half

a century ago with the sound

of the water rushing under them

and passing between them unvarying

and inaudible it is still there

so is the late sunlight

of that winter afternoon

although the winter has vanished

and the bridges are still reaching across

the wide sound of being there

 

This is another picture of a particular time, place, and mood that really resonates. 

 

Cold Spring Morning

 

At times it has seemed that when

I first came here it was an old self

I recognized in the silent walls

and the river far below

but the self has no age

as I knew even then and had known

for longer than I could remember

as the sky has no sky

except itself this white morning in May

with fog hiding the barns

that are empty now and hiding the mossed

limbs of gnarled walnut trees and the green

pastures unfurled along the slope

I know where they are and the birds

that are hidden in their own calls

in the cold morning

I was not born here I come and go

 

The next one is a profoundly philosophical musing, with a core truth. Everything is fleeting, and pleasure that can be forced to stay will become pain. 

 

One of the Butterflies

 

The trouble with pleasure is the timing

it can overtake me without warning

and be gone before I know it is here

it can stand facing me unrecognized

while I am remembering somewhere else

in another age or someone not seen

for years and never to be seen again

in this world and it seems I cherish

only now a joy I was not aware of

when it was here although it remains

out of reach and will not be caught or named

or called back and if I could make it stay

as I want to it would turn into pain

 

I’ll end with one more beautiful word picture. 

 

Falling

 

Long before daybreak

none of the birds yet awake

rain comes down with the sound

of a huge wind rushing

through the valley trees

it comes down around us

all at the same time

and beyond it there is nothing

it falls without hearing itself

without knowing

there is anyone here

without seeing where it is

or where it is going

like a moment of great

happiness of our own

that we cannot remember

coasting with the lights off

 

I will definitely have to find more Merwin collections for my library. The best would be that Library of America book - if anyone finds one lying around in a used book store…

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

Source of book: I own this

 

This book was my selection for Banned Books Week this year. Yeah, it took a while. A bunch of other books to finish, plus 14 music gigs in the first two weeks of October. But, I eventually did get a rainy weekend to sit down and finish it. 

 

You can read my thoughts from over a decade ago (and a different political environment) on banned books week here. The list of official reads is here. 

 

The last several years have seen a resurgence in book bans and challenges - and in attacks on librarians, school teachers, and administrators who do not kowtow to the fundamentalist bigots. 

 

It is no accident that the books targeted tend to be written by certain kinds of authors. While the ostensible reason for bans is claimed to be “sexually explicit," this isn’t actually the case. Most have any sex occur “off screen” so to speak - it is referenced or implied, but not actually described.

 

Rather, the bans target books by and about minority groups. Books by non-white authors make up the largest group of banned books, particularly for books about history or politics. The next-largest is LGBTQ authors. Also significantly represented are female authors, and authors with disabilities. 

 

It isn’t difficult to see what is going on here. The white, male, cishet, religiously bigoted minority is flexing its power to silence voices that challenge that power. 

 

This has always been the driving force behind book bans: the fear of the ruling majority of losing power and influence. 

 

I was not sure what to expect in reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, honestly. I did know that it was the subject of important court cases on obscenity both here in the United States and in Britain. After all, I studied them in law school. This book was responsible for the most important legal standard when it comes to censorship: does the book have “redeeming social or literary value”? In this case, the court ruled that it in fact did, paving the way for the legalization of many other books of merit that had been banned because of sexual content. 

 

The other thing I knew about the book and the author was that they have been criticized by feminists. I mentioned these criticisms when I read the feminist classics, The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, and Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin. I feel like I should re-read those sections now that I have read Lawrence. 

 

Whatever I was expecting, this book was quite different than that. 

 

In what ways? Well, first, the sex reminded me far more of female-oriented “bodice rippers” than the male-oriented banned books I have read. (Hello, The Tropic of Cancer and Ulysses, which tended to be more gross than titillating.) 

 

While the sex scenes did have a bit of an obsession with simultaneous orgasm from intercourse (which isn’t possible for most women), and there was a lot of focus on the phallus, the fact that female orgasm and female desire were centered as well seemed a bit feminist for 1928. 

 

I will add that one of the central themes of the book is the need for women to have sexual connection, to have an outlet beyond being just a “wife and mother,” a caretaker to male ambition. For Lady Chatterley (aka Connie), her husband Clifford is a gilded cage, someone who sees her as an ornament and a reflection of himself. She needs more. There is a lot of focus on Connie’s physical and emotional needs, which felt surprisingly progressive for the era. And that is more in line with, say, Kate Chopin, than with many other male authors of the time. 

 

The other thing that I was not expecting was how much this book is really about class, not sex. 

 

Lawrence grew up in a working-class home. His father was a coal miner, and his mother, although educated, because of her lower-class background, was reduced to needlework to support the family. 

 

Thus, he was very sensitive to the way that the higher classes look down on the lower, even when, as was the case for him, he was actually better educated, better read, and a far better writer than the stuck-up Lord Chatterleys of the world. 

 

For Connie to leave him for a working-class man rather similar to Lawrence is the greatest slap that Clifford can imagine. 

 

Finally, the book is strongly anti-industrial, seeing it as grinding and dehumanizing the workers, creating obscenely rich capitalists, polluting the earth, and destroying the beauty of the natural world. 

 

He was not wrong. 

 

Thus, there is a lot more to this book than its sexual content. 

 

I will also say that the writing is really good, the ideas thoughtful, and the ending a lot more positive than I expected. (Hey, how many books from the era dared a happy ending? Especially for a “loose” woman?) 

 

There are a number of strong points to the book. I think Lawrence captured the sense of alienation that class distinctions create for everyone, from Clifford, who cannot see those “below” him as equally human, to Mellors, who feels looked down upon despite his obvious intellectual gifts. The scandal of Connie’s rejection of the aristocrat for the commoner must have been every bit as scandalous at the time as the sexual content. Which is one reason I suspect that the book was banned for so long. There is nothing in here that is more graphic than The Canterbury Tales, after all. 

 

I also thought the general discussions of class, the industrial revolution, nature, and the needs of humans to connect to their own bodies were good. As I said, there is a lot more to this book than the sex, and the court decision nailed it in finding artistic and cultural merit in the book. 

 

I will also note that my own life experience has been somewhat similar to Lawrence’s in one sense. I was born to parents who did not have college degrees, descended from farmers who worked the land. I myself never got a real college education, being instead forced into the law school for the cult my parents were in. To the degree that I have a broad education - and I believe I do - it has been because I did it myself on my own time. Hence the name of this blog, by the way. 

 

So, I have experienced what Lawrence and his stand-in, Mellors, are a bit sore about: being looked down on for lacking the upper or upper-middle class background; at the same time as one’s former peers resent your upward mobility, calling you “stuck up” for knowing more. 

 

It is an interesting experience, and has been a factor in my difficulty with my birth family, as well as a source of discomfort with some of my legal peers who came from a higher social class than I did. 

 

The book resonated with me for that reason as well. 

 

For those who don’t know the basic plot, here is a quick summary. (Spoiler warning, but the book IS nearly 100 years old…) 

 

Connie is one of two daughters in a minor aristocratic family. She “marries up” by marrying Clifford, Lord Chatterley. 

 

Alas, he is badly injured in World War Two, which also claimed the other men in his family, and indeed a generation of men in Britain and the continent. He is left paralyzed from the waist down, and unable to get an erection. 

 

In compensation for his loss, he throws himself into a series of projects. First is the group of intellectual aristocratic men who discuss Big Ideas™ while Connie is expected to wait on them, and keep her own thoughts to herself. Then, he becomes a writer of popular but forgettable books, expecting Connie to be his secretary, amanuensis, and editor. Which she does. Finally, he decides to address the failing returns of the coal mine on his estate by attempting to find alternative uses. (And of course, by squeezing wages of his serfs workers.

 

All the while, he expects Connie to be his companion, his caretaker, his world. He tells himself that this is generosity on his part, but he really has no idea of her needs, desires, or inner life. And, of course, his physical inability to perform the sexual act leads to what Lawrence considers his “emasculization” - a reduction of his humanity to his intellect, devoid of either emotion or physicality. 

 

And it isn’t just Clifford - the author castigates an entire generation of Englishmen (and indeed humans) for the loss of sensuality, passion, and connection to the animal body. 

 

How much of this to truly accept is debatable. Simone de Beauvoir had a valid criticism that emphasis on physicality and the connection of essential humanity to the drives of the penis can be problematic. 

 

In any case, after an unsatisfying affair with a playwright, Michaelis, who seems fundamentally unconcerned with satisfying her sexually, Connie falls for the handsome, physical, and virile Oliver Mellors, a former soldier from a mining family who is now working as Clifford’s gamekeeper. 

 

After a number of passionate sex scenes (which are surprisingly well written for a guy - generally women are better at these, in my opinion), she becomes pregnant with his child. 

 

At the end, she has left Clifford (who has in turn divorced his long-estranged abusive wife), and there is the promise of a future together for them. Definitely scandalous. Perhaps even in our own time. 

 

As usual, I jotted down a bunch of lines that I thought were good. 

 

In this case, the opening is excellent, expressing the feeling after the great war, but which also resonates in our own era. 

 

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We’ve got to life, no matter how many skies have fallen. 

 

In speaking of the early sexual experiences of Connie and her sister, the author comments on the way too many men are. By the way, this book is an excellent reminder that the first sexual revolution took place in the 1910s, not the 1960s. It was in the 10s and 20s that the massive shift in first sexual experiences for men occurred, changing from initiation with a sex worker to sex with a peer. Anyway, apparently young men haven’t changed much since. 

 

In the actual sex-thrill within the body, the sisters nearly succumbed to the strange male power. But quickly they recovered themselves, took the sex-thrill as a sensation, and remained free. Whereas the men, in gratitude to the women for the sex experience, let their souls go out to her. And afterwards looked rather as if they had lost a shilling and found sixpence. Connie’s man could be a bit sulky and Hilda’s a bit jeering. But that’s how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don’t have them they hate you because you won’t; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can’t be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may. 

 

I also loved this insight into the true “elites” like Clifford. Do not confuse them with who the MAGA sorts call “elite” - that is, educated, thoughtful, white collar sorts who had to earn their money rather than inherit it. The true elites are the obscenely rich, the born rich, who confuse wealth with substance, lucre with brains. (Think: Trump and Elon Musk…) These elites lack any actual breadth of experience and knowledge, mistaking their comfort within their own peer groups for actual cosmopolitanism. 

 

But Clifford, while he was better bred than Connie, and more “society,” was in his own way more provincial and more timid. He was at his ease in the narrow “great world,” that is, landed aristocracy society, but he was shy and nervous of all that other big world which consists of the vast hordes of the middle and lower classes, and foreigners. If the truth must be told, he was just a little bit frightened of middle and lower class humanity, and of foreigners not of his own class. He was, in some paralyzing way, conscious of his own defenselessness, though he had all the defense of privilege. Which is curious, but a phenomenon of our day. 

 

Yes, a bit of this still going on today, perhaps? Later, Connie observes this more closely. 

 

But she could not help feeling how little connection he really had with people. The miners were, in a sense, his own men; but he saw them as objects rather than men, parts of the pit rather than parts of life, crude raw phenomena rather than human beings along with him. He was in some way afraid of them, he could not bear to have them look at him now he was lame. 

 

The intellectual group that Clifford surrounds himself with has some interesting views, some of which may well have been Lawrence’s own. For example, they talk about how sex has become weirdly a matter of public concern, rather than seen as a physical act, like “going to the privy.” It is the obsession with other people’s genitals and what they do with them that makes sex so fraught. 

 

One particularly strange conversation comes from Tommy Dukes, one of the group, who has no particular interest in sex. At least with women - whether Lawrence intended it or not, he comes off as pretty gay. 

 

“Yes, I feel something is wrong between men and women. A woman has no glamour for a man any more.” 

 

This eventually leads Clifford to suggest that Connie have an affair, so she can have the child which (he thinks) will make her happy. His reasoning is intellectual, not emotional, because he has buried his emotions so deeply. 

 

“It seems to me that it isn’t these little acts and little connections we make in our lives that matter so very much. They pass away, and where are they? Where….Where are the nows of yesteryear? … It’s what endures through one’s life that matters; my own life matters to me, in its long continuance and development. But what do the occasional connections matter? And the occasional sexual connections especially? If people don’t exaggerate them ridiculously, they pass like the mating of birds. And so they should. What does it matter? It’s the life-long companionship that matters. It’s the living together from day to day, not the sleeping together once or twice. You and I are married, no matter what happens to us. We have the habit of each other. And habit, to my thinking, is more vital than any occasional excitement.”

 

Clifford isn’t entirely wrong, of course. A long marriage is about a whole lot more than sex, and the day to day living together is really the meat of the connection. But he also completely misses what his wife craves and needs. And yes, sex is part of that. But also the sense of connection that he imagines they have, but really don’t, because he cannot truly see Connie as human. 

 

There are a number of interesting conversations about class, wealth, and politics. One interesting bit comes from Mrs. Bolton, who ends up becoming Clifford’s live-in nurse, and displacing Connie in his affections in a weird, quasi-sexual way. She has more common sense than he does, though, for sure. In this conversation, Clifford is worried that his workers might go communist. 

 

“Oh, you hear a few loud-mouthed ones. But they’re mostly women who’ve got into debt. The men take no notice. I don’t believe you’ll ever turn our Tevershall men into reds. They’re too decent for that. But the young ones blether sometimes. Not that they care for it really. They only want a bit of money in their pocket, to spend at the Welfare, or go gadding to Sheffield. That’s all they care. When they’ve got no money, they’ll listen to the reds spouting. But nobody believes in it, really.”

 

As it becomes more clear, her point is that if Clifford makes sure his workers have a bit of spending money, they are unlikely to radicalize. Enough to feel comfortable, have a little fun, and so on. 

 

This is a lesson that our present oligarchs would do well to keep in mind. Grinding the faces of the poor leads to revolution. 

 

Lawrence is no fan of industrial capitalism for sure, or for the constant drive to make money. Throughout the book, he refers to the “bitch-goddess” of success. A bit sexist, perhaps, particularly since it is the men in the book that spend their time worshipping it. But the idea of the goddess-mistress, it is defensible. 

 

He realized now that the bitch-goddess of success had two main appetites: one for flattery, adulation, stroking and tickling such as writers and artists gave her; but the other a grimmer appetite for meat and bones. And the meat and bones for the bitch-goddess were provided by the men who made money in industry. 

 

I am definitely reminded of the tech-bros here just as much as celebrity culture. The two sides of the worship of the bitch-goddess of success. 

 

Another unexpected parallel to our own times in this book comes when Clifford shifts from his social circles to a withdrawal from human contact. 

 

Connie was a good deal alone now, fewer people came to Wragby. Clifford no longer wanted them. He had turned against even the cronies. He was queer. He preferred the radio, which he had installed at some expense, with a good deal of success at last….And he would sit alone for hours listening to the loud-speaker bellowing forth. It amazed and stunned Connie. But there he would sit, with a blank entranced expression on his face, like a person losing his mind, and listen, or seem to listen, to the unspeakable thing. 

 

I have seen this withdrawal from acquaintances, family, and clients, where so many withdraw into a Fox News bubble, or an internet bubble, losing sight of reality eventually. It really is a sad state of affairs. And no wonder Connie feels trapped and wants to find a way to actually live, rather than withdraw. 

 

Mellors too feels trapped to a degree. After rising into the middle class during his army days, on his own merits, he found himself out of place in civilian life, and frustrated with the pretense and focus on pretending not to care about the small things of life. I won’t quote it because it is too long, but the contrast between the “not caring about prices” of the middle class (or at least pretending not to care) and the fact that the working class has to care about those things is interesting. 

 

As the book goes on, what little decency Clifford may once have had is eroded by the need to make money. On a walk through the grounds, Connie is interested in the beauty of nature, while Clifford rattles on about why aristocracy is necessary. It sounds a lot like what the tech oligarchs say now. Basically, nothing changes…

 

Interestingly, he admits to Connie that “blood” (aka genetics) do not really matter. It is nurture. But to him, that is why the common people shouldn’t be educated. That isn’t their role.

 

“But when it comes to expressive or executive functioning, I believe there is a gulf and an absolute one, between the ruling and the serving classes. The two functions are opposed. And the function determines the individual.” 

 

Another telling scene comes when Clifford is reading some philosopher or another (the book doesn’t say who), who makes the claim that man is becoming more spiritual and less physical, and eventually will not even need a body. 

 

And yes, that sounds like Transhumanism way before its time. Who knew? There are a couple of good lines in this, from Connie, who not only understands the issues, but realizes that Clifford really does not. And, for the first time, she actually talks back to him. 

 

“What silly hocus-pocus! As if his little conceited consciousness could know what was happening as slowly as all that! It only means he’s a physical failure on the earth, so he wants to make the whole universe a physical failure. Priggish little impertinence!”

 

Clifford just doubles down, not realizing that his own wife would like a bit of a physical connection to someone, and indeed to the world itself. (Which is, after all, physical.) 

 

“Believe me, whatever God there is is slowly eliminating the guts and alimentary system from the human being, to evolve a higher, more spiritual being.” 

 

Just like the AI evangelists and the Transhumanists, Clifford is wrong here. Our guts aren’t going away. We cannot separate the body and the spirit - that’s really a gnostic heresy anyway. We are embodied, humans with minds and spirits that are fully integrated with the physical bodies we are. 

 

The last quote I want to feature is another totally unexpected one. It occurs when Connie writes from Venice that she is not coming back to Clifford, but will be leaving him. 

 

The face in the bed seemed to deepen its expression of wild, but motionless distraction. Mrs. Bolton looked at it and was worried. She knew what she was up against: male hysteria. She had not nursed soldiers without learning something about that very unpleasant disease. 

 

Did Lawrence really say that? Did he really mention “male hysteria” - what we in our times dub “testeria”? Yes he did. 

 

And that is why I think this book is a lot more feminist than some feminists give it credit for. Far from accepting the patriarchal claim that men are naturally “less emotional,” Lawrence makes it clear that Clifford - and indeed the men of his generation - have merely suppressed their emotions, lived in denial, and set themselves up for unpleasant episodes of testeria. 

 

There really is so much in this book about that question: how do we live in harmony with our nature? How do we reclaim the physical and emotional in our humanity? How do we connect in every way with our fellow humans? How do we resist the dehumanization of industry and the endless quest for money and fame? 

 

So, yes, the sex scenes are somewhat graphic. But also they contain references to female pleasure, which is probably even more scandalous. The book, however, is about so much more than sex. It embraces the big questions of existence, and proposes answers that are more than merely intellectual, but emotional and even physical. 

 

It rightly deserves its reputation as a classic, and was a good choice for a book to challenge the belief that sex is incompatible with artistic and cultural merit. 

Our Town by Thornton Wilder (North High 2025)

Back in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, when I had a decent bit of time on my hands, I decided to read Our Town, one of three works by Thornton Wilder to win a Pulitzer. I greatly enjoyed it, and hoped that one of our local theaters would put it on stage. 

 

While the usual suspects have not yet done so, I was thrilled to see that my friend Tara, now theater arts teacher at North High, decided to take on this classic with her students. 

 

I wrote about the play itself in detail when I read it - you can read that here. 

 

The challenge of performing this play is in no small part because nearly nothing happens the entire first act. There is just mundane, everyday life - meals, work, school, family. Everything is so ordinary, which is of course the point, as the play makes clear by the end. 

 

While the central event is the love story between George and Emily, the young neighbors, this doesn’t lead to a simple “happily ever after.” Instead, we discover in the third act that she has died in childbirth, leaving behind a son and a husband. 

 

It is at this point that the true theme of the play becomes apparent. Emily realizes as she revisits the past that most people move through life without being truly present, without realizing that the magic is in the everyday moments, the mundane happenings of daily life. 

 

The late Terry Pratchett may have put it best:

 

“It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it is called life.” 

 

The striking thing about the play to me is that it lacks any grand tragedy, any grand events, anything that hasn’t happened thousands - maybe millions - of times before. While the death in childbirth is horrible and tragic for the grief-stricken family and friends, it is nothing out of the ordinary. 

 

Wilder points out that it still means something. That all of it means something. That the breakfast you eat quickly before school matters. The commonplace romance matters. The simple conversations between neighbors matter. It all matters. 

 

Which is why we should live our lives as if it matters. And that is a really positive and inspiring message. 

 

This production was true to the original, with only a minor exception, and that includes everything from the set to the delivery of the lines. The sets were a couple of bare platforms, a couple of ladders, and a few bare walls. The costumes were a nod to the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century, but nothing fancy. A few of the leads gave a bit of a New England accent, but otherwise, Grover’s Corners was any town, and the time could in a way be our own, notwithstanding the obvious cultural references to the ways of the past. 

 

The cast in this case was a lot bigger than typical - I am estimating 40ish? I assume that this was because of an abundance of students, which is always a good thing to have. Some parts were therefore non-speaking. The town was filled with everyday citizens. 

 

This also made it easier to have the “questions” in the first act come from the stage, rather than actors carefully planted in the audience. 

 

One of the best things about seeing a high school production, particularly when, as for North High, it isn’t the shiny new school where all the rich kids go, is that for many students, this is probably their first time on stage. Perhaps their first time memorizing a large number of lines as well. It is a beautiful thing to watch, kids finding their way around a classic work, making it their own. 

 

Tara said in her introductory remarks that she loves teenagers. And I have to agree with her. Teens get an unfair rap in our society all too often. Normal human development at that age is complicated, and calls for patience, of course. But it also is fascinating to watch. I wouldn’t want to be a teen again, but I still remember the feelings. Watching these teens bring art to life was a reminder that each generation finds its way. 

 

There wasn’t a program, so I have no idea who anyone was in this show - I don’t know them…yet. Perhaps some will find themselves on stage at Bakersfield College, or one of our local theaters, in the future. 

 Becky and George

Overall, I thought the production was great. The lines were clear and enunciated, but also emotional. The actors played off each other well. I felt that the characters were personal, not merely true to the source. Everyone seemed thoroughly prepared, rehearsed, and coached. They have every reason to be proud of the work they did and the art they created. 

 

One of the things I think is a real strength of our town (the real one where I live) is the number of truly dedicated teachers that do great work in not just teaching but in real involvement with their students. We have a good arts and music scene here, and a significant factor is the investment in the next generation that so many of my friends and acquaintances do day in and day out. 

 

You know, those everyday, mundane things that can be overlooked or seen as unimportant. As Wilder insisted, it is those things that truly matter the most. 

 

***

 

My wife, who attended the play with me, pointed out that “Grover’s Corners” was probably the inspiration for the fictional New Jersey town in the Henry Reed books by Keith Robertson. Of course, Robertson’s version was “Grover’s Corner” - the town was so small it really just had the one. 

 

Americans Claim to Hate "Socialized Medicine" - but they Actually Depend on It

This post stems from both a conversation online with a friend and a series of similar cases that have come through my office lately. And also, the recent cuts to the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) subsidies inflicted on Americans by the Republican Party. 

 

Americans - particularly white Americans - tend to see “socialized medicine” as a bogeyman, something to fear, the source of all problems, and on and on. 

 

And yet, Americans depend on the existence of socialized medicine for their survival - at some point in their lives. In fact, I have found that most people - including right wingers - really desire socialized medicine. They just can’t articulate it to themselves, because that would challenge their political commitments.

 

There are a few myths that prop up this belief, and continue to prevent the United States from joining the rest of the first world (and an increasing number of third world countries) in adopting true universal healthcare. 

 

I have practiced in the area of Medicaid law for over a quarter century. Here in California, we call it “Medi-Cal,” and other states often have their own cute names, but it is all Medicaid. My focus is getting people qualified for Medi-Cal when they need nursing home care, and preventing a claim against their estates for benefits paid. But I also have advised a lot of clients about “community-based” Medi-Cal, Medicare, and other health insurance related issues. 

 

I can say with honesty that the following are true:

 

(1) When I am able to solve problems for my clients, the solution is always some form of socialized medicine. 

(2) When I am unable to solve problems for my clients, it is nearly always because their real need is a form of socialized medicine that the United States refuses to provide for its people. 

 

I also practice law in a fairly Red county. Because senior citizens (55+) are the bulk of my clients, they skew even further Republican than the county generally. I regularly get clients wearing Trump hats and railing on about how all their problems are due to some combination of Democrats, black people, Hispanic people, and immigrants. 

 

In reality, their problems, more often than not, would be far worse if they lived in a Red state, and are caused by a lack of socialized medicine that covers their situation. 

 

This makes it, shall we say, challenging to be a lawyer some days. 

 

***

 

Let’s start with some truths that need to be acknowledged:

 

For purposes of this post, I will use “socialized medicine” to describe a healthcare system that includes the following:

 

(A) Universal coverage of a class of people, regardless of health status

(B) Government payment of all or part of the cost

 

This isn’t an entirely accurate definition, however. It is what most people mean when they use the term. 

 

An accurate description (per the dictionary) is a healthcare system owned and operated by the government - such as Britain’s NHS. This does not include other systems where there is a single payer (the government) but private ownership of hospitals and other providers. The latter is the most common form of universal coverage. It also does not include systems like that of Germany, which uses tight regulation, mandates, and subsidies in combination with private insurers to get the same result. 

 

If you want a quick and easy to understand summary of the systems some different countries use, this website is helpful. You might be surprised at some of the countries with better systems than ours. Just saying.

 

I use the colloquial definition of “socialized medicine,” however, because arguing about what is and isn’t “socialized medicine” is pointless and futile in most cases. 

 

It is easy to see, with this definition, that the United States already has some degree of socialization of its medical system. 

 

Medicare is socialized medicine.

 

If you are eligible for Social Security, and are age 65 or older, you receive Medicare, regardless of your income, health status, or employment. Everyone is covered. 

 

Government pays most of the cost (excluding co-pays and co-insurance), using tax dollars. One source (but not the only source) is the percentage withheld from wages as payroll/self-employment taxes. As I will discuss more later, this is one reason many people see Medicare as different from socialized medicine. 

 

But it is, in fact, socialized medicine. 

 

If it were not, then it would be paid by private funds, it would exclude those too sick to be profitable, and insurance companies could kick you off as soon as you cost too much. 

 

People age 65 and older are essentially uninsurable. By that age, all of us are at risk for needing care - and more of it as we get older. 

 

My clients often fail (or refuse?) to understand that literally the only reason they have access to healthcare in their old age is because we as a nation have socialized their medicine. 

 

Medicaid is socialized medicine.

 

Medicaid is, in my opinion, the most misunderstood Federal program. This is in part because the American right wing has succeeded in demonizing it and those who use it. I believe as well that a factor is the way that states (including California) have changed the name of the program. 

 

If I had a dollar for every person I have heard saying, “I’m not worried about cuts to Medicaid - I have Medi-Cal.” Not realizing, of course, that they are the same thing.

 

There are other misconceptions, driven by propaganda. The truth?

 

Most recipients of Medicaid fall into one of these categories:

(1) Low wage workers whose employers refuse to pay benefits 

(2) Low income seniors who are retired

(3) Disabled people, including the mentally ill

(4) The minor children of those who are either low wage or disabled

 

The rest mostly fall into smaller categories, such as college students, caregivers for the elderly or disabled, or unemployed and unable to find work. 

 

There are actually very, very few recipients who are able to work and find employment but do not. 

 

This idea of people freeloading is a myth. A straight-up lie. Access to healthcare doesn’t lead to anyone freeloading. Rather, access to healthcare enables people to treat illness and return to work. 

 

Another truth:

 

41% of all births in the United States are paid for by Medicaid. This rate is even higher in many Red states - Louisiana is the highest at 64%.

 

Needless to say, this isn’t because 41% of people of childbearing age are lazy freeloaders - most of them do indeed work. Rather, it is because younger people are likely to have lower wages, and less access to benefits. 

 

Another truth:

 

Nearly all people in nursing homes are having their care paid by Medicaid. Medicare does not cover long term care. Few of us have $13,000 a month sitting around waiting to be spent. Thus, nearly everyone - the obscenely rich excluded - are getting Medicaid if we need nursing care. 

 

This is where I usually end up assisting people in obtaining socialized medicine. 

 

Medicaid is indeed socialized medicine. If you meet the income and asset guidelines (which vary depending on the specific program within Medicaid you need), you will qualify, regardless of health. The government pays the cost. 

 

Another truth:

 

Undocumented people do not get Medicaid except in an emergency. And remember, this emergency coverage is there to protect the provider. This means that undocumented people are denied access to preventative medicine, diagnosis, and treatment except when they are actually dying or trying to. (Or if they are in a nursing home, because once upon a time, we didn’t leave old ladies to die on the street.)

 

That this is stupid, cruel, and hateful is true – and I will look at that a bit in the next post. It is also thoroughly anti-Christian.

 

The ACA exchanges are socialized medicine

 

This is another area where misunderstandings are rampant. 

 

“I hate Obamacare - we should get rid of it. I prefer the Affordable Care Act.”

 

They are, of course, the same thing. And Obamacare is really just the old Republican plan - Romneycare - but because a Democrat enacted it, it is bad, right?

 

(Beyond the scope of this post is a discussion of the merits and problems with the ACA - that is a whole topic.)

 

The ACA exchanges were intended to fill the gap between middle class people (who are fairly likely to have employer-subsidized insurance) and poverty level people (who qualify for Medicaid.) 

 

The GOP, through its bought and paid for Supreme Court, and legislative undermining, has chipped away at the ACA. By eliminating the individual mandate (at least the fines which enforced it), people who were currently in good health could (and often did) take the risk of not paying for coverage, since they figured they could always join later when they got sick. And, more recently, but cutting the subsidies, the cost of those ACA plans will skyrocket next year. 

 

Far too many people - particularly in Red states - rely on these plans even as they vote to cut their own throats. 

 

And yet, these are indeed socialized medicine. The plans are required to cover pre-existing conditions, take all applicants, and a significant portion of the costs had been covered by government funding. 

 

As this funding is withdrawn, and people can no longer afford the plans, a death spiral is likely to ensue, driving costs further and further higher until the system collapses. 

 

This is intentional on the part of the Republican Party, which has also voted to make massive cuts to Medicaid. The why is something I will discuss later in this post. 

 

The bottom line is that a lot of people gained coverage through the ACA, and now stand to lose their coverage through no fault of their own, but through the actions of one of our main political parties. 

 

Employer-provided insurance is socialized medicine

 

Did this surprise you? It shouldn’t. If you get employer-provided insurance, it is universal: you get the insurance regardless of how healthy you are, your age, your income level. 

 

Not as well understood is that it too is subsidized. This happens in two ways. First, the healthier (meaning younger) employees use less, and the extra is used to care for the less healthy (meaning older) employees. 

 

The other is less well known. Because health insurance is an “above the line” deduction, employees do not pay taxes on it. If you count health insurance as part of the wage paid, then that part of the wage is not taxed. Meaning it is subsidized by other taxpayers. I wrote about this a few years ago. The worst part is that high income people get more of a subsidy for their health insurance. 

 

Employer-provided insurance therefore does indeed qualify as socialized medicine - and that is why we all want it, and even make job decisions based on obtaining and keeping this coverage.

 

ALL of us benefit from socialized medicine, whether we have private insurance or not

 

This too is a huge misunderstanding that many people have about our healthcare system. It too is the result of a deliberate propaganda misinformation campaign by the right wing. 

 

Have you or anyone you loved done any of the following:

(1) Ridden in an ambulance to get to care?

(2) Been treated in a hospital?

(3) Been treated in an emergency room?

(4) Received healthcare at a rural hospital or clinic?

(5) Needed care in a nursing home? 

 

Guess what? You have benefited from socialized medicine. Because without it, none of these would be able to survive. 

 

This is where a huge misunderstanding comes in. The purpose of socialized medicine isn’t just to pay for care. It is to ensure that the providers of that care get paid. 

 

When you call an ambulance, why does it come? Well, because the company that provides that ambulance knows that it will get paid, whether or not you have insurance. (There are a few exceptions, but they are relatively rare.) 

 

Emergency rooms are required by law to treat anyone who comes in (more about that later), and they can only do so knowing that they will get paid. 

 

And what about after the emergency room, when you are admitted to the hospital for care? That too is only possible because of socialized medicine paying the providers. 

 

Going even further, rural providers - hospitals, clinics, doctors, labs, and more - typically treat a population that is lower income than average, with a majority often on Medicaid. Do you think that such a provider could afford to give away more than half their care without being paid? Of course not. Without socialized medicine, these providers would close. 

 

As would most urban hospitals as well. The only ones that could afford to exist are those that were in places where few people are low wage workers. 

 

My wife is now in management at one of our local hospitals, and has been in on meetings with the local and regional CEOs. And it is ugly - they are literally talking about which hospitals they are going to have to close with even the cuts that the Republican Party made this year. If the ACA exchanges collapse, that is more uninsured people who will have zero coverage except for emergency Medicaid……which is also on the chopping block. 

 

And yes, this problem is even more serious in Red states. Rural healthcare in particular could very well disappear entirely from much of Red state America. 

 

This assumes that the OTHER socialized medicine, Medicare, stays intact. Without that, the senior population would mostly lack the ability to pay. That would pretty much completely collapse our system entirely. Only the obscenely rich could afford to fly to Europe every time they needed healthcare. 

 

Note that when these go away, ALL of us suffer. The ambulance won’t come for us either. The emergency room will be hours away and too crowded to see us. If we get sick on vacation, there will not be a hospital or clinic to treat us anywhere nearby. 

 

At that point, we will be living in the equivalent of a failed state, a third world nation where getting sick or injured means death or disability, not treatment and recovery. 

 

I already mentioned above that nursing homes rely on Medicaid for long term care patients. And on Medicare for pretty nearly everyone there on a short stay. 

 

***

 

Recurring Client Scenarios

 

I wanted to talk a bit about some scenarios I see in my office all the time. These are not specific cases - I have removed identifying details - and they happen again and again and again and again. 

 

Scenario #1:

 

Client is in their late 50s or early 60s, and becomes ill with a chronic serious disease that needs long-term treatment and care. 

 

Think of things like cancer, heart disease, autoimmune disease, joint degeneration. 

 

As a result, they miss some work, and the employer fires them or lays them off. Now they get that COBRA notice informing them that they have 60 days to sign up for gap coverage or they lose all health insurance. And this gap coverage costs thousands of dollars per month! 

 

So, they come to me, and all I can tell them is that they are over the income limit for Medicaid (due to unemployment payments, or a spouse’s income). At least we have the ACA, right? Well, those costs just went WAY up - perhaps almost as much as COBRA payments. 

 

What do they do? If they are sick enough, the “best” option they have is to go on Medicaid with a really high “share of cost” - that’s a co-pay they have to make before Medicaid covers anything. For a single person, that means they “get” to keep $21,597 per year of their income (2025 limits - they change each year), which is all of $1,800 per month, not enough to pay average rent even in Bakersfield. So, do they lose their house? Or die of treatable cancer?

 

Yes, this fucking SUCKS! And this is the stupidity we put up with as Americans. 

 

Scenario #2:

 

Client is in their late 70s, increasingly frail, and becoming forgetful. They cannot safely live at home. 

 

The best place for them would be in a Residential Care Facility for the Elderly (RCFE) - we commonly call these Assisted Living, Memory Care, or Board and Care. 

 

Alas, these places can cost $3,000 per month or up to a lot more than that. Client only has $2500 per month in income. 

 

So, the only option is a skilled nursing facility, which Medicaid will pay for. And, which costs Medicaid a lot more per month than the RCFE would cost. 

 

So, client gets a worse situation, the government pays more. It’s a lose-lose. At least there is Medicaid to pay for the nursing home. If that goes away, what? People die in their homes from neglect?

 

Scenario #3:

 

Young couple is engaged. They get a little ahead of things, and get pregnant. They have no employer-provided benefits, although they do both work. They want to go ahead and get married, but are worried about paying for the pregnancy - even an uncomplicated one is tens of thousands of dollars, and if something goes wrong, they would be financially destroyed.

 

What are their options? Well, prior to the ACA, not much. 

 

Private insurance would turn them away because of the pre-existing condition. In fact, most plans wouldn’t cover a pregnancy until two years of payments had been made. Yeah, that’s helpful. 

 

Medicaid? Well, that is problematic if they make “too much” money. 

 

The “best” option? She quits her job, and they remain unmarried so his income doesn’t count. And indeed, I have advised clients in this situation to do just that. Have your children, get married after you are done. 

 

Note that this could be even worse: imagine they were already married? The best legal advice I could give them would be to get divorced. And yes, that is crazy! 

 

The ACA, at least, gave options: get insurance through the exchange, with subsidies based on income, making coverage at least somewhat more affordable. This is what the Republicans decided to take away this year. 

 

Scenario #4:

 

Parents have a child who is profoundly disabled and needs constant care. This includes surgeries, in-home nursing, and more. A LOT more. And this need for care will not end when the child turns 18. 

 

Most private insurance does not cover all of the care needed. Often, not even close. So what is a parent to do? 

 

Well, Medicaid currently steps in, even if the parents have too much income and assets to qualify for benefits themselves. And when the child turns 18, they will qualify for Medicaid for the care they will need for the rest of their lives. 

 

***

 

I could add to this list, of course. The people in other states who find that their entire savings will be spent on nursing home care, or claimed in an estate claim, literally making them worth more to their heirs dead than alive. The people who are suddenly laid off, jeopardizing their access to life-saving medications like insulin - where even the delay in applying for Medicaid or ACA insurance could kill them. The undocumented workers who are ineligible for Medicaid and ACA who end up in the ER and hospitalized with life-threatening conditions that could have been prevented had they had affordable access to primary care and diagnosis. 

 

Our medical system is fucked up and cruel and stupid. 

 

It also costs us twice as much per person than the rest of the first world.

 

That above is a fact. We pay far more to cover fewer people. And we also get outcomes that are no better - and are often far worse (maternity and infant mortality, for example) than the rest of the first world. 

 

Every one of the scenarios I listed above would be solved with universal socialized medicine.

 

Every single one. 

 

Imagine if, when you lost your job, your insurance kept on going, whether or not you could afford hundreds or thousands of dollars per month. Imagine if you could get cheaper, less institutional living and care arrangements near the end of your life. Imagine if pregnancy and starting a family didn’t risk financial ruin because your employer refused to provide benefits. Imagine if we treated nursing home care like other healthcare, and paid for it, rather than trying to financially ruin the elderly as punishment for getting old and frail. Imagine if working class people didn’t go without healthcare because they couldn’t afford it. Imagine if we didn’t cruelly punish the people who harvest our crops, build our houses, mow our lawns, and a lot of other necessary yet poorly compensated jobs by denying them healthcare?

 

We could do ALL of this - the rest of the first world does, after all - but we refuse to.

 

Why is that?

 

I’ll talk about that in the next post.