Margotlog: Why I Will Vote for Hillary

Margotlog: Why I Will Vote for Hillary

Have you noticed recently how sedate and almost severe are the two most prominent European political women--Queen Elizabeth of England and Angela Merkel, of Germany? Recently I've been comparing them to Hillary Clinton, whom the US press has criticized for her inability to "connect" with the American voters, even as most commentators acknowledge that electing her president is the only sane thing to do, given the choices.

I've been aware, also, of life experiences and standards for correct behavior that apply quite differently to men and women. Such as being viewed as a "cold" female, even as her own husband, whom we all remember as a dashing guy with a big smile and hearty handshake, conducted a flagrant affair with an aide so much younger than he that she could have been his daughter. Shades of ancient Rome.Yet there were enough exonerating snickers about Bill Clinton to let him off the hook--boys will be boys, you know. But what about grown women? What about the wife of a flagrant philanderer?

Hillary Clinton did more than survive the ravages of that scandal. She emerged essentially unscathed and had the integrity and hardiness of spirit to soldier on without much ado. She kept her wits and let the glare of publicity fall where it was deserved. Such is not a scandal that would affect an American male in the same way. We don't elect women to higher office with the unspoken awareness that they may make a sexual misstep and we will forgive them.

I would argue that much of what the press finds "cold" about Hillary Clinton is her canny awareness that however she may be judged politically, she would never, as a woman in public life, be forgiven any tinge of indecency. I wish she would select Senator Elizabeth Warren as her running mate. Senator Warren has chosen to be guarded about her political ambitions. She has not pushed herself forward, and instead let her outstanding qualities burnish her reputation. I'd like to watch the psychological fortitude of two extraordinary woman working together to make the country run straight and true. I'd like to be spared the awkward, embarrassing dance of a subservient male as running mate. I can't think of a single American male politician who could support a strong, empowered female president except perhaps the generous, mature Joe Biden, and we've already enjoyed his good qualities in our current presidency.

One last thing: Until the current middle-east refugee crisis, I thought Angela Merkel was cold and almost too self-effacing. Of course I'm not German, but I'm female, and I grasp the challenge of heading an essentially male-dominated political order, constantly in the public eye. When I have read about Angela Merkel's successes in Germany remind me of Hillary Clinton--they are both policy "wonks," with great capacity for managing details and guiding larger issues toward successful conclusions.

Then came the refugee crisis. Angela Merkel extended the migrants a welcome far greater than was offered by any other European country. Week after week, month after month, she rallied her government, sometimes against severe resistance, to do not only what was generous and humane, but what became politically, and economically risky. This is true heroism. This is an awareness of Germany's debt to humanity for Hitler's decimation of the Jews. This is the hardiness and courage to do the right thing. I believe that Hillary Clinton would do the same. The reasons would be different, but the impulse I am sure would be there, along with the fortitude, compassion, courage, and determination to make the impulse a reality.

Of the three major contenders for the nomination, Hillary Clinton stands far above Donald Trump whose shoot-from-the-hip style is brash, untutored and terrifying. Especially of late, Hillary's Democratic competitor Bernie Saunders has also shown himself mean-spirited, vituperative, and stupid. What could he possibly gain for himself or his party by ranting against his opponent like an ill-mannered teenager?

As every day passes, Hillary Clinton looks stronger and stronger. I applaud her political experience, her stalwart presence, and her proven capacity to adjust her approach when necessary, to keep in sight what is good as well as possible.

Margotlog: Rag Queen: Gender, Generations

Rag Queen: Gender, Generations

  Two high-spirited, deep-feeling, savvy young women start an online poetry magazine. They title it Rag Queen. I submit a poem, after a poet friend, also a woman, introduces me to its existence. After my poem is published, I tell my daughter, plenty savvy herself, that the magazine is called Rag Queen. She exclaims with unalloyed pleasure, “That’s great.” She knows immediately that the rag in question is the monthly rag worn to collect menstrual blood.

     I’m startled. Does her generation of women feel as mired in their femaleness as mine occasionally did?  Is it still outspoken smart-ass to refer to menstruation in public? When did I stop being fixated on my femaleness and become more attuned to the ways gender and generation twine through both men and women?  

   Exhibit: My husband has become softer in body as he’s aged, yet his upper body is still laughingly much stronger than mine. His forearm muscles are rock hard. He lifts weights to help keep them so. But my legs perform better than his. I don’t have ankle, knee, hip pain. He does. My legs are relatively strong, compared to the skinny-minny, other parts of my body. Is this because, since early childhood I walked to school and biked everywhere? Or is it because I inherited my father’s flabby upper body, but my mother’s strong lower one? Through the thirty years I’ve known my husband, he’s preferred driving to walking. Most of his cars are red.

   Exhibit: This mid-April I escaped Minnesota’s cold and took the slow ferry from Naples across sea-green waves to the Isle of Capri. The slow ferry was quieter and less crowded than the “turbo-powered,” more pricey option. Sinking in bliss and fatigue onto a bench on the upper deck, I let go all kinds of imperatives and simply gazed at what was passing on the right: rocky splits of land dotting off from Naples proper, then the bigger island of Ischia, shimmering in the sunlit blue.

   A family of four sat ahead of me. The father was tall and sandy-haired, with a hawk-like nose and long, stilt legs. Moving jerkily around the benches, he seemed almost incapable of sitting still. The dark-haired mother lounged in one place, her soft plump body slowly sliding as she dozed. Their daughters, both tall and willowy, yet acted quite differently. One, like her father, kept on the move. The other, like the mother, sat quietly in place, reading or staring over the brilliant blue. It took me a while to notice that though the daughters both had long, sandy-colored hair which whipped in the breeze, their profiles were surprisingly distinctive—the sedentary one had their mother’s broad, soft features; the active one, their father’s sharper look.

   Eventually the two sisters sat together, talking softly. I sighed with relief. This was the way it should be, I thought. But given how my sister and I have tugged away from each other over the years, such sisterly companionship is not at all predestined.

   Exhibit: Back to literature: The mysteries my husband likes usually bore me after a few pages. He doesn’t show much interest in the psychological memoirs, novels, and poetry I enjoy. It’s a gender divide I tell myself, as is the fact that though far more women read works of all kinds than do men, far more men are published.

     Thank you, Rag Queen co-founders, creative director Marlana Eck, editor-in-chief, Kailey Tedesco, for your energy and aplomb, your friendship that flowered into a garden of female delights. Thank you for publishing men, but putting women writers first.

     Thank you, for letting me interview you via the internet, for insisting, Marlana, that “Women’s stories are SO important. It’s imperative that we let them tell their stories from their viewpoints….Women develop a lot of grit in their lifetimes, and Rag Queen hopes to speak to that.”  

   Thank you, Kailey, for asserting that “I’m not looking for [Sylvia] Plath mimicry…I want confessionals that are eclectic, hybrid, messy in all the right places, strange and professional at once. Give me a poem that can easily transmogrify into its own woman. Give me a sea-witch, or a mushroom fairy, or your Nana on paper.” 

   What woman could resist such an invitation?

Margotlog: Taking a Long View

Margotlog: Taking a Long View

     Sometimes it helps to stand up, leave the house, and drive south to Red Wing with a good friend at the wheel. Red Wing, named for an Native American chief, is a Minnesota town nestled among three natural beings: two bluffs (one with a memento to Prince on its granite side) and a mighty river, aka, the Mississippi. From Soren's Bluff, Mary, my driver friend, pointed out a sharp curve in the river. "Hard for long barges to navigate," she said. Mary should know: she and her husband own a houseboat moored at a local marina. While she was cleaning the boat, I stood on the dock and stared a two, curved-roof barges, pushed by tug boats. River traffic.

     Since coming home, I've been sitting quietly eating homemade veggie soup with limes to keep it from going bad, and letting two publications nudge my thoughts around some stiff curves.The first is an article in The Nation* distinguishing between the actual workers for racial justice and those who make noise about it, aka the media makers. Creating a true movement depends on people getting to know and trust one another, which can't happen via 140 characters, aka the scope of a Twitter. For various reasons including having my Facebook page hacked about five years ago, I don't participate in social media, except for this blog. Instead I write letters, talk on the phone, email friends, strangers, even organizations. All of this invites plenty of mental exhaustion. It helps to get away and let mental and social activity slow to one other person.

     I've been concerned for a while about the dangers of unbroken screen time. Watching young people walk down the street, their heads bent over a hand-held device, makes me wonder what happens to them when they reach a curb and keep going. Smash-ups? Inattention to dying trees, hungry children, flaming buildings?
Hearing that Donald Trump's ignorant, inflammatory comments are often met with fierce delight also feeds my notion that we've been co-opted by quick, down-and-dirty media. We've lost the ability to look both ways.

Reading over my cooling soup, I noted that the National Resource Defense Council is taking some huge forest-wreckers to court. Canada has one of the world's most extensive old-growth forests. Such forests are hugely important as sequesters of carbon, not to mention homes to thousands of living things from microbes to toads to migrating birds to bears, and caribou. Decimating these forests with roads and logging not only would permanently damage these benefits, but alter another that's becoming more crucial with increasing climate change--the protection and cleansing of water.

     As our human range extends, it's possible to understand that our needs are not merely met at the local level. They can be potentially stymied by what happens thousands of miles away. We've always lived on a globe, but we haven't always had the power to create havoc on such a scale, nor to recognize that there are some streets we should never cross.

     Just to see what happens, tomorrow I'm going to wear a blindfold and walk five houses down my block. Since I walk this way almost every day, I should know the terrain quite well. But I imagine my ears will become extraordinarily alert. I'll nudge only one foot forward at a time. I'll stand still every few paces and listen to make sure some neighbor isn't backing a car out the driveway and potentially across my path. What I actually own will shrink. I'll become like the brother and sister dogs who were recently brought to a local Animal Humane Society. When well-meaning workers separated them, one dog began shaking violently. Only when a veterinarian examined him, did she discover the dog was blind and had been depending on his sister for all his cues. Luckily, the dogs were reunited. We depend on so much in our world.

* "Black Lives Matter: What Comes After the Hastag? by Dani McClain, The Nation, May 9/16, 2016.