If the Presidential Primary were held today...

Warning: this post is going to be, like many of my posts, rife with inaccuracies, vagueness and exaggeration.  So just relax and know that.  Part of why I'm putting it out there is to attract more information.

But whereas, it has come to my attention that there is a presidential election next year;

And whereas, it appears that the California presidential primary is March 3rd and not June;

And whereas, I like to panic early to avoid the rush;

I am going to tell you that if the primary election were held today, Thursday, April 4th, 2019...

---I would be in no position to vote because I don't know enough.  Okay that was kind of a teaser.  Here are things that I am thinking about the declared candidates for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States:

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) still has a lot of my attention because he:
stays focused on policy and not personalities including

• Medicare for All
• Minimum wage is a living wage
• Full voting rights and civil rights for women, people of color and LGBTQ
• Break up Big Banks
• Campaign Finance Reform
• Combat Climate Change
• I have worked with Bernie.  I trust Bernie.  As the Washington Post pointed out earlier this week.  Bernie is bona fide progressive but also has a proven track record of being pragmatic.  He does not have to knee jerk agree to a campaign plank that hasn't been well thought out because he doesn't have to prove that he is committed to a populist agenda that benefits everyone--we know he is. 
• He is the only candidate so far that I actually think is a good campaigner and I would actually want to be president.
• Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is the next most interesting to me -- I am midway through her campaign book.  It makes me think that I would love her to BE president.  Given all her errors of judgment campaigning so far, I'm not convinced that she can WIN president.  But I definitely will be watching.
• Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) bears closer watching.  I feel like he does have something special and does seem to really be engaged in change rather than just wanting power.  
• Beto O'Rourke -- former Texas Congressman-- definitely adorable and fun to watch.  Can't tell how much I would actually want him to BE president, certainly fun to watch him RUN for president (sort of the opposite of Elizabeth Warren).
• Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) -- of course since she is closer to home and since I have a legislative background, I have some independent knowledge of Kamala (the only one other than Bernie).  As impressive as she seems if you don't know her, I'm actually not convinced that Kamala Harris stands for anything other than Kamala Harris.  There is a lot of evidence that her governing principle is to do and or say whatever she needs to do or say to gain power.  Yes, we've had a lot of white male politicians who are versions of that and yes I'm sure I would vote for her if she were the nominee, but can't we do better?  I don't want to expect more from a woman and person of color than I would expect from a white man so I'm watching myself on that.
• Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) -- not off to a great start.  Willing to tolerate a certain amount of quirky midwestern quasi centrist charm in exchange for a candidate who can win the midwest but not convinced she is it.
• Governor John Hickenlooper (D-CO) -- I know next to nothing about this guy but I generally think being a Governor is a better background for running a country than being a legislator.  
• Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) -- sort of the same for him except that I think he is one to watch because he is prioritizing climate change.  With such a crowded field and with so many California Democrats being willing to put this survival of the species issue ahead of other issues*, anyone who focusses really strongly on one major voting block and is able to raise money is someone who might make it into the top tier.  Jay Inslee could be such a one.

Marianne Williamson (Author and speaker)--this is a subject

for another post but Marianne, like our president, knows the power of the word and knows how to bring that power to bear.  I actually think that the focus on reparations may have come from some of Marianne's early talks and writings.  She has been talking about reparations for slavery as a vital need in our nation as a spiritual/energetic matter to move on.  She has a HUGE following in California.  Millions of people buy her books and download her lectures.  Don't completely write her off because she's not a politician.  I seem to remember someone else who wasn't a politician defying expectations in a primary.

Last time I checked Joe Biden is not a declared candidate so I won't comment. 

*myself, I put combatting climate change a close second to economic issues such as Medicare for all and Living wage--why? because I would like us to survive and thrive--but let's not pit these issues against each other the way the right does--I like the way Bernie does both.  He has been a strong vote on the environment and would be a leader on this issue.  

If a lesbian "bloke" from Australia can get angry in front of men, then why can't I?

Five snouts up for Netflix's "Nanette" comedy special with Hannah Gadsby.  When my husband said, "do you want to see a Netflix special with a female comic that's supposed to be pretty good?" I quickly agreed.  The first hour of the 2-hour special is very funny, Hannah Gadsby makes us laugh about what it was like to grow up in small town Australia as a lesbian who looks like a "bloke" and "has all this going on" (she says, waving her hands at her body).

After that hour we took a mid-way bathroom and tea break and rejoined our hero.  At that exact moment, this comedian takes a sharp departure from, well, comedy and starts instead to tell the truth about her life.  In so doing, she unpacks the difference between comedy and reality, what it was really like to grow up a lesbian androgynous looking female, and to raise some hard questions about how men treat and see women.

She does this on stage in front of a few thousand people, which is, frankly, awe-inspiring.   And for parts of it, she sounds really really angry and you can feel how uncomfortable that makes absolutely everyone.

It made me realize how very seldom I have seen women be really really angry in front of men about what it's like to be a woman.  In fact, if I Google "woman who screamed at" only Ana Maria Archila screaming at (Senator) Jeff Flake in the elevator after the Brett Kavanaugh hearing pops up.  This should be an indication of how seldom a woman screams at anyone in public.

For me, personally, what most catches my attention is when Hannah wondered what it is that white men are so angry about.  Why do the men who rule the world have fragile egos?  Why shouldn't they be the most secure people ever? 

Lately I have been thinking about that a lot.  I have previously shared this video about how "why I'm not racist is only half the story" -- in it Robin DiAngelo educates us about "white fragility" and how when we deflect and defend and justify our behavior as white people, trying to prove that we're not racist, we make it much harder for people of color to be open with us, and we prevent the very change we say we are for.


And ever since that video, I've wondered also about "male fragility" and how it functions to keep the patriarchy intact. From the time I was a young girl, I was socialized to be sensitive to the male ego.  Ironically, I did not have a father with a fragile ego.  He was pretty secure in his manhood.  Nonetheless, my southern belle of a mother taught me that it was an essential component of successful womanhood to never demean men, make them feel small, to never insult their egos.

For years, even as a "feminist," I have had a part of me that has had pride at how well I get along with, work with men.  "Men feel comfortable with me,"  and "I have a way of talking to men" are thoughts I have had. Even as a strong, loud, opinionated woman, I have largely observed and enforced the related guideline that women are not allowed to discuss "women's" subjects in mixed company.  But, perversely, men's subjects are everyone's subjects.  So if men want to discuss sports, or geek out on country music in front of a group of women, or make dick jokes, women must quietly listen or occasionally come up with a question to ask.  If women want to discuss menstruation or Barbies or their armpit hair, they are advised to wait for an all female gathering.

Falling asleep after watching Hannah's special, I realized that my taking pride in my "way" with men reflects a deep internalization of the patriarchy, but also that it reveals a fundamental mistrust of the men around me.  All my life I've been surrounded by wonderful, kind, loving, feminist men.  I've never been sexually assaulted, or even harassed.  I've been safe and loved.  I am white.  I am happily married to a man.  I am affluent.  I am highly educated.  I am ridiculously articulate.  I am American.  

If I can't get angry at men about the condition of women, who can?  If I can't speak my truth, who can?  If an Australian lesbian comedian who looks like a bloke can speak her truth in front of men, then so can I.

One White Woman's (ill-advised?) Journey toward and Rave Review for Green Book

(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) Five Enthusiastic Snouts up for the movie Green Book which controversially just won best picture.  It was a bit of a journey getting to Green Book, but I finally did, and, spoiler alert, I loved it.  When I first heard about the movie, I immediately wanted to see it.  But I had read reviews and heard from critics that it might be sentimentalizing segregation.  That it was just another black white buddy film written and directed by white men.  That it was the new Driving Miss Daisy (only reversed).    

These criticisms really caught our attention, and we strongly considered skipping the film altogether.  Then our young adult children came home for Christmas holidays and we took a look at the movie offerings on a given day.  Only two films that the four of us could agree upon were being shown in the right window:  Green Book and Creed II.  Unfortunately our kids talked us into Creed II--I didn't have the pleasure of seeing the original Creed (full confession: in the late 70s I had a poster of Sly Stallone on my bedroom wall), I'm told it was a steep fall from I to II.  

That choice behind us, I put Green Book in the back of my mind and kind of assumed I wouldn't get to see it.  Then a friend of mine left a long voicemail message with a "spiritual check-in" that was 90% about how good Green Book was, or at least I thought that was what she was talking about, the message was slightly garbled.  The next time I spoke with her directly, I brought it up.  "Were you talking about the movie Green Book on that message?"  She said "yes! have you seen it yet?"  I said no, and mentioned the critical reviews.  She said she hadn't read those reviews and that she and her relative (both of whom are African-American) had absolutely loved it.  So there's that...

Then about a month later, ANOTHER friend, in another ostensibly spiritual talk, speaks for 15 minutes about how Green Book was kind of a life movie for her (a 'life movie' is a movie that is so perfect for you that it's one of your top movies of your life).   I spoke with her about this afterwards, and told her about the negative reviews.  She, an African American woman who also happens to be a top concert musician, expressed disagreement and said "consider the source, that movie was God's honest truth."  So there's that...

And then we saw it.  Just last weekend it was the only thing we could find to do on a Sunday afternoon of a holiday weekend within walking distance of our hotel in San Francisco.  Oh. My. God.  We just absolutely loved this film.

Now, I haven't seen every movie that was nominated for best picture this year and so I'm not positive that I would have voted for it for best picture.  But I can tell you that this particular white woman found it to be a stunningly beautifully written and acted movie about the relationship between these two men in the context of segregation.

The deep cynicism of some of these negative reviews honestly makes me wonder if any of these folks actually watched the movie or did they just read the plot?  Yes.  There is SO much about the conceit of the film that could have gone badly awry in the execution:  black white buddy road movie genre is SO over done.  The elite African-American pianist could have been portrayed as a caricature.  The movie could have made the northern whites seem non racist or the southern whites seem to be racists with a heart of gold.  None of that happened (in my estimation).

The dialogue, the character development, the relationship works.  It just does.  Tony Lip, the Italian driver, is a bit of a caricature of Italian Americans in some ways, and definitely provides the comic relief.  But the film was created and written by his actual son, and this is a true story.  And Viggo Mortensen, who plays Tony, displays a stunning range of emotions, skills and depth.  I haven't seen Bohemian Rhapsody and I've heard that Rami Malek's performance is amazing, but I'd have no trouble handing Viggo an oscar for that performance.

And Mahershala Ali was equally magnificent as Dr. Don Shirley.  What beauty, what poise, layered over such humanity.  I'm thrilled that he won best supporting actor.

Now lets talk about Spike Lee and Blackkklannsman for a second.  I am a HUGE Spike Lee fan.  I was outraged when Do The Right Thing--which I consider to be one of the greatest films of all time--was passed over.  But Blackkklannsman is not even in my top 10 favorite Spike Lee films.  So no, I don't think I have to be outraged that it was overlooked for best picture.

I don't fully understand how or why the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences makes its decisions.  And I can't know that Green Book "deserved" the oscar.  But I can know that IMHO it was one helluva film.

And the winner is...Chaos! Will Vice (Cheney) or Trump win the award for most destruction to our democracy?

With the movie Vice up for several Academy Awards and a trumped up "state of emergency," it is time to compare the Trump and Cheney/Bush presidencies.  What comes to mind is chaos vs. control.   No, not KAOS vs. CONTROL as in the brilliant sixties spy send-up Get Smart.  We’re talking Chaos and Control: the universal forces.   While both Trump and Cheney may be power mad rightwing leaders creating change, Trump is chaos.  Vice President Dick Cheney, whom the movie Vice portrays as (and many believe to have been) the true leader of the Bush presidency, is control.   I have an emerging hope that, despite appearances chaos may be more beneficial to the democracy than control. 

For one thing chaos = disruption, which we now value.   We live in a time where Amazon, Uber and other highly successful companies celebrate their “disruption” of business as usual.   Trump is the disruptive presidency.  Could he be the chaos we need to disrupt the system of complacency, ignorance and lack of engagement?  Surely the flaunting of separation of powers by declaring a fake state of emergency on the heels of a government shutdown is a major piece of that. You didn’t know the importance of separation of powers?  Watch the president take your tax dollars away from something you value and use it to build a wall;  didn't know you needed the feds?  Try getting food stamps, visiting a national park, getting your tax return, seeing a doctor, flying on a plane, during a government shutdown.  

Let’s look at it more closely.  Dick Cheney, the movie Vice reminds and educates us, systematically, methodically and quietly seized power in the Bush White House from the famously powerless position of the Vice Presidency.    Cheney recruited and cultivated the theory of  “unitary executive power:” a way to vastly expand the power of the executive beyond that of the other previously “co-equal” branches of government, legislative and judiciary.  When Al-Qaeda attacked on 9/11, Cheney created, from that crisis, opportunity (as the overworked Chinese maxim recommends).   Convincing Secretary of State Colin Powell to dissemble before the world about “weapons of mass destruction,” the Bush-Cheney team was able to justify the invasion of Iraq (instead of Afghanistan, which would have been the obvious choice), allowing their big oil buddies to get their greedy hands on long-desired petroleum fields. 

Moreover, it seems that Cheney accomplished all this all fairly secretly, largely out of the public eye.  The consequences of Cheney’s campaign for control were devastating.  While US military casualties were low as wars go, it is estimated that Desert Storm killed close to 500,000 people in Iraq, including a high proportion of women and children.  Nearly 100,000 Afghani people were killed.   In the name of defeating “terror,” the Patriot Act was created to justify secret extra judicial procedures, indefinite detaining and torture of prisoners, as well as legalizing broad domestic surveillance of Americans.

Compared to now, no one noticed.  Yes, the Bush-Cheney team was mocked, reviled and despised by Democrats and much of the world (how did the old joke about Cheney's arrhythmia go? W was just a heartbeat away from the presidency?).    There were, of course, protests.  But it wasn’t like it is now: a fraction of the population noticed; a fraction cared; a fraction could tell you what was happening.    Proof of this is provided by the re-election of Bush-Cheney.

Enter the chaos of the Trump presidency.  Although posturing as another rightwing power mad leader, Trump gives no evidence of discipline, control, theories or system.  “I have a gut,” he brags.  “My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward.  I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after.” (The Art of the Deal).  

I’m sure Dick Cheney, alive and well with someone else’s heart in his chest, sees that all this chaos could be put to good use for the rightwing.  After all, Trump’s tweets, bleeps and blunders as well as the Mueller investigation are all a tremendous distraction.  Any reasonable Control could use it as a slight of hand to shove through all the pieces of the conservative agenda that were still missing.  And in some respects, this is occurring.  Trump’s surviving appointees are doing their best to dismantle the Clean Air Act, protections for endangered species, civil rights protections, etc.  And then there’s Brett Kavanaugh (although him we noticed).

But there’s also this: we are not at war.  And, as the midterm congressional election demonstrated, many more people are paying attention. Look at the number of presidential candidates.  Look at the voter registration.  Look at the crop of new women in Congress.  Look at the move to the left.

There’s a spiritual element I haven’t spoken to that I want to unpack: as a human race at least in the west, we’ve been taught to fear chaos and change and to court control.  But in the body, it is said that all diseases are control and cures are chaos.  Cancer is, while it disrupts our lives, very systematic in how it builds and grows.  And all our medical “cures” for cancer (basically cutting (surgery) burning (radiation) and poisoning (chemo) are chaotic.  They are designed to disrupt the system of cancer and to make it break down and cease to grow and build on itself. 

Prior to this presidency, we’ve been aware of a cancer growing in our body politic: that cancer is complacency, ignorance and lack of engagement.  Cheney and his ilk exploited that cancer, encouraged it and grew it.  Witness the elimination of the fairness doctrine which allowed Fox News to rise.  Maybe unwittingly, Donald Trump is the chaos we needed to wake up from the dream that we could have a real democracy without acting like the sovereign people we are on paper.

Is Governor McDaddy for Real?

Everybody agrees that our new Governor Gavin Newsom's adorable 2 year old Dutch stole the show on Monday when he charged the stage while daddy was giving his inaugural address.  But as Mayor McHottie becomes Governor McDaddy, two things nag at me as to whether Gavin Newsom is for real:

1.  Daddy Credentials. While I have no doubt that Marcos Breton in the Sacramento Bee today is correct that Gavin Newsom is a loving father (Tiny pat on Newsom's back), a quote in Monday's story on the Newsom family's visit to the Sacramento Train Museum raises some question as to how well Gavin knows his toddler: 

“This (event) was literally designed for Dutch,” [Newsom] told reporters. “But he’s still looking for Thomas the train. If there’s one thing I can contribute to Sacramento, maybe it’s getting a Thomas train exhibit for 2-year-olds.”

See how sad Thomas the Tank Engine Looks?

It may seem like a small thing but anyone who has ever spent the tiniest time with a Thomas-oriented child knows immediately that Thomas's name is "Thomas the Tank Engine" not "Thomas the Train."  Our children were into Thomas approximately twenty years ago and my husband and I immediately noticed the discrepancy.   How much time can he be spending with Dutch if he doesn't know Thomas's name? [Note:  Eight years as Lieutenant Governor and a cakewalk gubernatorial election should have provided ample time with children]

2.  Support for Single Payer Health Care.  Governor Newsom campaigned on single payer health care yet the folks with health care chops he has appointed are more of the incrementalist, Obama/Clinton mode.  No health care insider in Sacramento is going to tell the media the truth about these appointments because they need to curry favor with the new administration.  I spent twenty years in and out of health care policy in DC and Sacramento but am out of the business so I can talk:  

• Newsom's Cabinet Secretary: Ana Matosantos--as Brown's Budget Director she was the hatchet person on health care costs and she was good at it.  Any expansion of health care coverage was generally met with an eye roll.  Even if directed to implement single payer, she is temperamentally conservative and cautious--would undermine at every turn.

• Chief of Staff: Ann O'Leary--Ann's career has been spent implementing and advancing incremental health care expansions for the Clintons (first Children's Health Insurance Program for Bill Clinton and then as health care point person for Hillary's Presidential 2016 presidential bid).  While she may be a perfectly good chief of staff, it is difficult to imagine that she could or would advance single payer health care.

• Office of Strategic Engagement: Daniel Zingale--Daniel is former Senior Vice President of the California Endowment, the largest foundation doling out health care dollars in the state.  He is brilliant.  He is bold.  He is creative.  He is a good hire.  And he is also deeply entwined in California healthcare politics and money which depend upon undermining single payer.  If anyone could make single payer happen if he wanted, it would be Daniel, but I don't see it.

This is a subject for another piece, but folks who support Medicare for All -- or statewide government provided universal health insurance commonly called "single payer"--need to understand that health care is the single fastest growing industry in the state and the country.  It consumes a massive amount of the GDP and all of big business is intertwined with its success.  This also includes traditionally progressive unions most importantly the SEIU (Service Employees International Union) which represents the workers at Kaiser Permanente.  Nothing gets through the Democratically controlled California Legislature that the SEIU is strongly against.  SEIU carries the water for Kaiser Permanente.  Kaiser Permanente is opposed to any government health insurance unless they are the insurance.   So to have any shot at all at advancing the agenda he campaigned on, Newsom needs to have appointed someone with vision and commitment to universal health insurance.  It looks otherwise.

So far, Governor McDaddy is striking out on tank engines and health care advisors.  Stay tuned.

My life with Jerry Brown

I am surprised to find that I am grieving a little as today Jerry Brown leaves office and the new governor Gavin Newsom is inaugurated. Here are some highlights of my life with Jerry Brown:

1965--I am four years old at the opening of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, with my grandfather Culver “Nick” Nichols standing next to Jerry’s father Governor Pat Brown.

1974--As a teenage girl in California I was grooving, like much of America to “You’re No Good,” “When Will I be Loved?” and “Different Drum” while I ogled pictures of Jerronstadt--which is what we would have called young handsome California Governor Jerry Brown and huge pop sensation Linda Ronstadt if they had a terrible celebrity couple names back in the 70's.

1976--While everyone else was thinking about Proposition 13 which slashed property taxes and ruined California's public schools, I was out knocking doors for Proposition 15 to end construction of new nuclear power plants, very angry at Jerry for opposing it. It was my first failure for many ballot initiatives that I worked to pass.

1992--I get excited about Jerry's "progressive" (and third) run for President and call his ground-breaking toll free number to pledge money for his campaign.





1993--I allow Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook to pull me quickly into another room to avoid having to encounter Jerry Brown at Ralph Nader's Center for the Responsive Law where he has been hanging out with nothing to do. We are late for a meeting of the single payer health care coalition, at odds with Hillary Clinton's health care plan, and can't afford another long conversation with Jerry. He has grown his hair long is wearing large belt buckles and is just generally a mess. But what do I care, he is done with politics [note: this era is not mentioned on his Wikipedia page].

2011-2013 -- as the health care advocate for the state's largest union of health care workers working to implement Obamacare in California, I grumble, resent, and tussle with the Governor's office. Why does he cut health care benefits in the recession? Why won't he commit to expanding health care benefits for the working poor? Despite the massive access and influence of my union I am in the same room with the governor only twice: at the annual state prayer breakfast and one time in 2012 when I attend a bill signing in Southern California. Fun note: it looks like I am about to kiss then Assemblymember Toni Atkins of San Diego who is now the leader of the California State Senate.

2015--I resent the Governor for claiming to be an environmentalist and continuing to allow fracking. I compare him unfavorably to Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York (of whom I am generally no fan), who banned fracking in 2015.

2015-to the present--as a private citizen not particularly engaged in politics, I have really fallen in love with our crusty, fiscally conservative, moderately liberal governor. I love his stupid latin references, his meandering style, his refusal to do what's expected of him, and his dog, Sutter.

Today--I am sad to see the era of Jerry Brown fade away. He was my governor for 16 years. He was my foil. He was my fool. And he has no idea who I am. No more Jerry Brown in my life?

My Trip to Auschwitz Death Camp in 1974 Part II

In 1948, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously paraphrased George Santayana, "those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it."  Recently we learned that something like 30% of young people in Europe do not know that millions of people were systema-tically killed by Nazi Germany in death camps in what know as "the Holocaust."  In our 1974 trip to Auschwitz, my family gave me the trip of a lifetime and a gift of never forgetting. 

In Part I: The Journey I cover our family trip to Auschwitz by rail and ocean liner to Poland in 1974.  We disembarked in the port of Gdynia, Poland, a family of five--three children ages 5, 9 and 12--in the dead of winter lugging 6 months' worth of belongings.  Poland at this time is a tightly controlled Soviet bloc country.  It is very unusual for them to have tourists period, let alone from the United States.  No one speaks English.  My father gets by in German.  As you'll recall, some 30 years prior German came in handy with the Nazi occupation.  It is somehow made clear to us that upon our leaving the country every single dollar that we bring in will have to be accounted for.  We will have to prove that we spent each dollar in a state-sanctioned institution, and not in the thriving black market economy.  We need to exchange our dollars for the Polish "złotys" (ooh, that was fun, have never had to use that crossed out "L" before as a character) and then spend them in the right places.

Our mother, never particularly chill, is understandably quite worried about the logistics and the money.  My father has made exactly no prior arrangements for travel or accommodations--based on his expertise "bumming it" through western Europe in 1954 by himself.  Our mother points out approximately hourly that there may be a difference between a 23 year old man traveling solo with a backpack and a sleeping bag through western Europe and a family of five traveling through the Soviet bloc with about 15 suitcases.  Our father shrugs this off and says, "honey, don't worry.  It will all work out."

Everywhere we go between Gdynia, Gydansk (aka Danzig), Krakow, and Birkenau (which is where the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp is) people sidle up to us and whisper "dollars for złotys."  This is the sum total of the English they know.  Our father,  the uniquely American "cowboy socialist" (my coinage as far as I know) loves breaking the rules and finding a shortcut almost as much as he loves a good safety net.  Every single time they say "dollars for złotys," he rifles through his wallet and considers it and every single time our mother angrily whispers "no way, don't you dare!"

When we get to Birkenau, ready to visit Papa's idea of a family field trip, a crumbling death camp that has not yet been turned into a museum, we learn that there are no state-sanctioned accommodations in the town.  None.  Zippo.  Zero.  Not that they're booked, that they don't exist.  So here we are, a family of five, there is not another train out of town until tomorrow, there are no state sanctioned places to spend the local currency.  What's a socialist cowboy to do?  Pa's face lights up--why dollars for złotys, of course!

Easily my father parlays our dollars into a room for the night in a local home.  In this home there is already a family of 4 living in one room.  They give us their sleeping quarters behind a curtain happy to bed down with blankets on the floor in exchange for $10 which represents a month's wages in black market exchange. They feed us from their table, I remember it as cabbage, potato and sausages.  Maybe that's just because all Polish food seems to be cabbage, potato and sausages.  

In the morning we awoke to embark on a day in the camp.  I remember the town being very small and the camp being very large, by far the largest thing in the area.  In addition to all the other things that are chilling about a death camp, it is icky to all picture the boost to the local economy this vast death machine must have been.   I don't remember a guide of any kind other than our father, although I believe he did ask around and try to get someone to walk us around, maybe someone did and Pa translated from German.  

It felt like the whole town retained a literal stench of death from the camps.  The air was thick with it.  Our father narrated for us all, even Evan, a kid who scared easily, how the trainloads of men, women and children would have come in.  They would have been separated and deloused.  The healthier ones were put to work and the weaker ones sent to huge "bath houses" and gassed to death.

the "bath" house

I remember walking around the "bath houses" and my father describing how the gas would come down out of the "showers" and people would die in one mass.  I remember walking outside and my father describing how people would be buried in mass graves.  I remember him telling me that it was estimated that over a million people died in Auschwitz (which by the way had several campuses separated by a few miles from each other).

Our father, I should add, was generally a light-hearted genial man who loved to make jokes and play games.  He wasn't some grim shove your face in reality person all the time.  But, at least for me, this was by no means the first time I was being put through an unvarnished education on human cruelty.  From the time I was six or seven I could remember seeing the pictures of children napalmed by American soldiers in the Vietnam war, falling to sleep to the strains of Joan Baez singing "no more genocide in my name." 

My brief internet research here yields a reminder that it is a misnomer to call Auschwitz a "concentration camp," it's actually a death camp.  There were other camps in the Nazi operation that were designed to hold undesirables close together alive and working--immigrants, gays, communists, political prisoners.  But as "the Final Solution" was adopted, some camps, ideally situated near rail lines for easy transport of huge number of humans, were set us as "death camps"--Auschwitz was the largest of those.

As disturbing and non-fun as this trip was, I am very grateful for it.  First, in the way my grandfather-in-law Sam Magavern used to say, "at the end of one's life, it is the rough spots and vicissitudes which one remembers most fondly."  This is true of the journey on the whole, and emotional impressions of the camp.  All of it was so different, and so difficult (relative to the ease of my normal life), that I remember it in great detail, unlike so many easier more pleasant trips.

Secondly, and more importantly, I am grateful that at a young age I learned about some of the greatest atrocities that humanity has committed.  As difficult as these experiences were, particularly the visit to Auschwitz, they infused me with a strong moral compass for social justice, equality and an understanding of the true cost of racism.  

You'll want to know what we went through as we left Poland and passed into what was then the country of Czechoslovakia (on the way to Prague).  Customs officials looked over our paperwork, rifled through our luggage and seized the only weapon they were carrying, with a fierce look on their face, they pointed my brother's Star Trek disc gun at us and said "ha ha, bang bang, cowboy, who shot JR?" as relief flooded our bodies.  Evidently, we were headed back to the west.*

*Note, don't try carrying this gun if you're African-American.

My Trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1974 Part I--the Journey by rail and ship

Photo of Children at Auschwitz

With the rise of overt anti-semitism and white nationalism in the world and the recent report that most young Europeans have not heard of the Holocaust and cannot name a single concentration camp, I am more grateful than I have been before for my trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp 40+ years ago.

It was January of 1974, Richard M. Nixon was still president of the U.S., I was in the middle of 8th grade at Theodore Roosevelt Jr. High School which shares a fence with the San Diego Zoo.  Our father, Prescott "Nick" Nichols, a leftwing activist and professor of comparative literature at San Diego State University, had earned his "sabbatical" and wanted to spend it studying in Paris.

the Stefan Batory

 To get to Paris in 1974 with a tempera-mentally pessimistic wife, as well as a 13 year old, 10 year old, a 6 year old and six months worth of luggage (without wheels mind you) in tow, our father picked the following logical route to Paris:

• 2 days by Amtrak from San Diego, CA to Vancouver, British Colombia
• 3 days by Canadian Pacific Railway from Vancouver, BC to Montreal, Quebec 
• 10 days aboard the Polish luxury ocean liner called the Stefan Batory from Montreal, Canada to Gdynia, Poland (via England, Holland and Denmark)
• Then traveling by rail (almost said "horseback") through Poland and then Czechoslovakia to Paris, France

On the way to Auschwitz, I got to experience

• a massive strike of the pullman car servers on the Canadian rail, leaving us responsible for our own food, water and toilet paper on a 3 day trip across the continent sleeping only sitting up on our seats
• feeling sick and staying confined to my stateroom aboard the Stefan Batory every single day of the sea voyage--missing amazing looking food in the gorgeous dining room.
• Going through puberty on the trip as well as not eating so that I started the trip a plump little girl and ended it a tall thin young woman
• Returning from an overly long day trip in Rotterdam to see the Stefan Batory sail off with all our belongings and passports onboard, and, sadly, without us.  
• Causing us to take a taxi 20 miles up a river to a barge where we joined the Stefan Batory in progress steaming along at many knots and had to climb a very tall ladder in the rain as it swayed back and forth on a moving ship.
• I will never forget the look on my mother's face as she watched her 6 year old, Evan, being hauled up the side of the ship.

None of this, though, really prepared us for the experience of traveling "behind the Iron Curtain" in the then Soviet block in 1974 to Auschwitz, which as not yet a museum and had exactly NO infrastructure for tourists.

I'll tell about the actual trip to Auschwitz in my next post...