First-World Problems

Standing in the driveway in nothing but my underwear and a tee-shirt at midnight, holding a flashlight under my armpit so I could line the can’s spout up with the tank’s hole in the otherwise suffocating darkness, a light rain just starting to fall, I poured the last bit of $120 worth of fuel into our exhausted generator on day four of our latest power outage hoping it would hold for the next twelve hours so the hundreds of dollars of food in our refrigerators and freezers would not spoil, I reminded myself not to give in to frustration and despair. After all, I told myself, these are first-world problems.

I yanked on the starter rope and the generator roared back to life on the first pull. The food was safe for another shift, another $20 gas load, and I could walk back into the dark house, find my way back into the bedroom behind the flashlight’s small circle of light, close the window against the rain, and finally try to sleep again.

These are first-world problems belongs to a small family of things I say to myself to keep on an even keel, shortcuts back to clear and positive thinking, invitations from myself, to myself, to stay out of the morass of frustrated impulses and negative feelings. These are first-world problems. Things happen for a reason. And my personal favorite emotional crutch: it’s all good, even when it most certainly is not. 

But here’s the thing: the kinds of power outages we’re experiencing in this stretch of weeks at our home in rural, Southwest Michigan do not belong to the problems of the first world. They belong to an old world: electrical grid infrastructure that was patchworked together since the 1930’s and 1940’s, but mostly established in the 1950’s. The electrical system was built to service the electrical needs of homes that mostly were just starting to buy televisions in the 1950’s and some homes still cooled food in iceboxes, not the homes and businesses with the modern, voracious energy needs of the mid-21^st century. 

And they certainly don’t belong to the next world: the one being prepared for by future-oriented countries like Denmark and Germany who built infrastructure more protected from the extreme weather of our changing climate, moving towards green, clean renewable energy, putting public resources into the people rather than into the pockets of a small number of investors in coal mines and oil refineries. The electrical grid in Denmark is up and running 99.997% of the time while getting roughly 90% of its energy from renewable sources.

Spain is also way ahead of the United States when it comes to first-world solutions to energy challenges. Spain, a country more than twice as old as the United States - a country that funded the voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492 that eventually landed in a new world of abundant (and exploitable) natural resources - a country famous for a story of an old madman attacking the windmills it now runs on - belongs to a first world of solutions that simply doesn’t include the United States. 

A couple of years ago, during the first of several power outages that happened while our family hosted a high-school exchange student from Spain, the student asked us why the power was out with the same incredulity one would ask if they had spotted a unicorn in the front yard.

“Why is there no power,” Pepe asked.

“It goes out from time to time,” I answered.

“What do you mean it goes out,” he asked. “How does it go out?”

“Doesn’t this happen in Spain?”

“No.”

“You mean you’ve never lost power.” 

Pepe thought for a moment or two and shook his head. “No, never. Maybe it did for my parents or grandparents during the Franco era. It just works all the time.” 

General Francisco Franco died in 1975. 

My electrical service is from the Franco era. 

As I write these words in mid-July, 2026, the current number of people in the State of Michigan experiencing the fever, aches, and explosive diarrhea of a cyclospora parasite outbreak is at 1500 and rising. Cyclospora is a parasite that gets into human bodies from fruits and vegetables that have not been monitored and appropriately washed of fecal matter before being eaten. The average number of cases in Michigan each year is usually around 50. 

Cyclospora, and food covered in shit (sorry, fecal matter), are not first-world problems, either. They are, however, first-world choices. 

In July, 2025 the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) stopped monitoring the food supply for the infection when the Trump administration began firing scientists & researchers and defunding federal health and science agencies like the CDC and its food safety program, FoodNet, the organization that would monitor and track cyclospora, under the guise of “government efficiency.” FoodNet actively monitored eight food-borne pathogens at the time it was gutted. Now, it only monitors two food-borne pathogens. Listeria, anyone?

So, if you’ve never had the chance to shit yourself into dehydration with forty trips to the bathroom per day for weeks due to an entirely preventable food-borne illness, you may get your chance, thanks to a federal administration that is taking us back in time under the guise of making us great. It is no surprise to me that for the first time in the 250-year history of the United States, our lifespans are four years shorter than the lifespans of people in comparably wealthy countries – countries who are actually global leaders when it comes to quality of life. We spend far more per capita than any other country in the world on health care, but we lack basic, universal coverage. Nothing first-world about dying younger than we could or should. Trump’s health secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. stands on his MAHA platform – Make America Healthy Again - but it turns out under his leadership and the decisions of this administration, we’re being served a whole bunch of shit.

The generator was still running when I got up in the morning and still had plenty of gas when we drove away on some errands. When we returned several hours later, the generator had broken under four days of constant wear and tear. It had stopped working, a key piece of it broken away from 96 straight hours of shaking, so our freezers and refrigerators had warmed and the food inside thawed. We threw it out. We prefer our food to be pathogen free. Hundreds of dollars of food wasted. $120 of gas in four days to no avail. 

And what was next? Only a bunch of platitudes about a once great country and first-world problems, and another night of frustration and despair bearing down on Loriann and me, without our ability to go inside and turn on a light against the gathering darkness.

Meanwhile, the Frog

 I know you’ve heard this bit of folklore, but I’m going to tell you again. It bears repeating:

If you drop a frog into boiling water, it'll react instinctively and jump out right away. But if you put that frog in comfortable water and heat it up slowly, degree by degree, the frog will adjust to it, degree by degree. And he’ll just sit there not noticing the deadly danger it’s in until it's too late to jump out and save itself.

We’re so used to suffering of others that it’s commonplace, and our commonplace response to suffering is to adjust by degrees. We look away. At least until something happens that brings the suffering home. Until it’s too late.

As Nazi propaganda scholar Dr. Randy Bytwerk said every summer in his presentation to teachers at our Michigan Holocaust education seminar, “If you picked up the newspaper one Sunday morning and read that there was an earthquake in China the day before that killed a million people, and then took your dog outside and it ran into the road and was hit by a car, only one tragedy would make you sad, and it isn’t the million people who died in the earthquake.” 

In all the years he made that point, not one person disagreed with him. It’s understood, the heart just works that way: it cares first about what it holds closest.

But the other thing we don’t want to admit about the suffering of others is that it is useful to us in the way we’ve structured our lives in this country. Even necessary. Even comforting. In a system built upon competition, winners and losers, even social Darwinism, we need to see and know that others are worse off than we are. If we can see misery somewhere, and it’s not our misery, then our suffering is mitigated. Our country, our way of life, our national psyche, needs people who are losing - the homeless, the hungry, the desperate - so others know that though they may not be winning the game, neither are they coming in last. We just need to be able to look down on someone. 

In recent years it has become even worse, and whole business plans are built around division, hate, and anger. Look it up, it's called the Rage Economy, and it's a huge part of our national economy; algorithms of social media platforms need people miserable and divided and at each other's throats. Your fury is their profit. As a result you don't have neighbors any more in this economy, only two tribes: us and them. And the people who are "them" must be miserable, dominated, even destroyed. 

********************************************************************************************

What was written above was written this morning as the beginning of what was to be a political piece asking for anybody who read it to think about what’s going on in this country right now, to join me in the work of waking up to the violence unfolding in our country, degree by degree, while we all boil to death. Dr. Bytwerk instructed us about Nazi propaganda that its brilliance was making hatred and violence acceptable by degrees. I am learning now his instruction wasn’t purely academic. It was a warning. That was to be my essay. 

And then I got the news that my son was shot to death in Minneapolis today by federal immigration agents in the second murder of an American citizen in as many weeks; federal agencies such as ICE and Customs & Border Patrol have been acting as unrestrained, untrained, paramilitary forces without regard for the rights and responsibilities enshrined in law and the Constitution of the United States. They are the unrestrained paramilitary force of a lawless president and his advisors and administration. They act with violence and impunity. 

The victim in the shooting is not my actual son. But when I saw an image from the shooting I was hit in the gut. He looks like my son: tall, bearded, handsome, bright-eyed, exercising his rights, and well-intended. If my son were there, it could have been him. And my son has been there, not in Minneapolis, but in Kalamazoo and Chicago, marching in support of his rights and the rights of others, providing water at Black Lives Matter rallies, and looking out for his friends in Chicago over the past year who are brown or black or who speak Spanish. 

I also realize as I write this the benefit of distance I've had as a white man raising white sons in this country. And as the son of a good police officer; I was raised by my father to respect the police, and for good reason. I saw in my father and others in my family and the circle of police officers around them the dedication and professionalism of police officers dedicated to the credo of "serve and protect." But the exceptions to this have been deadly for far too many people, killed needlessly. Executed. And this has been especially true for black and brown men.  

The danger of violence at the hands of unrestrained law enforcement is something my black friends have had to live with as they've raised their children. To be cautious around law enforcement, even when you're not doing anything wrong. To be deferential to a deadly power that can act with impunity. I spoke to two friends about this over the years who have raised their black sons as I've raised my white ones. Our conversations about power and the police were very different. 

And now, here we are. We're not even talking about police officers with these federal agents. We're talking about a paramilitary force that's badly trained and hostile, politically motivated and politically loyal to one agenda and the person behind it, not the Constitution and not the rule of law. In fact, federal agents at the scene did not allow the rightful, lawful police in Minneapolis to access the crime scene; the police force in Minneapolis stands with the citizens they do protect and serve against the lawless, reckless actions of federal agents. This is the second murder in a row by federal agents of a Minneapolis citizen where the true police force is not allowed to investigate the murder. Here we are.

The victim in the shooting is not my actual son. But he could be. And he could be yours. It could be another Renee Good, one of our daughters. Welcome to America where the law doesn’t matter, only power does, and the power can and will do whatever it wants to those who stand opposed. Even murder. 

And it will continue to do so as long as we accept it.

It will be my son next. It will be me. It will be your son. It will be you. The water is deadly now. Federal agents are now openly killing American citizens.  

There are lessons we should learn from the frogs.

Sleepless in The Upside Down

Tristan’s car is handling a bit rough as I merge onto the highway and push the speed past 55 to 60. Now there’s a noticeable shimmy and the car feels like it’s floating on its tires, not at all well-grounded. I am not going to push the speed faster. 60 is enough. Not sure it’s 100% safe, but it probably is. I let the other cars fly past me on the four-lane racetrack that is I-94. Glad I’m driving it to the shop for an inspection. I wonder how much Pep Boys costs compared to other shops. At least they could get it in right away.

I turn off the highway and slow the car to a stop at the light on the Westnedge ramp. My thoughts go to dinner. Wonder what I should make. We had beef last night, and shrimp pasta tomorrow. I’ll make chicken, I guess. What should I do with the chicken? Mushrooms, maybe, in a sauce.

     1...Agents used unmanned trucks and a helicopter to surround the five-story apartment building. NewsNation, which was invited to observe the operation, reported agents "rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters." Agents then went door to door, woke up residents and used zip ties to restrain them. 

    Residents and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refuge Rights, which canvassed the area, said those who were zip tied included children and U.S. citizens...

I have to work on the budget for the Allegan County project. Told Doyle I’d have numbers to him this week, so we know how to plan for expenses with anticipated revenue. It’s late, though. There are dishes to do. It’s my turn to do them. Where is the doggone sponge scrubber thingy I like for dishes? God, I hate when she just throws it back under the sink. 

Loriann said she’ll be done with her work early enough this evening to watch another episode of Stranger Things. We’re rewatching the entire series before the fifth and final season comes out at Thanksgiving. Want to be up on the show and all of the different storylines. I wonder what’s going to happen to Dustin, Will, Mike, Lucas and Eleven, that strange kid from out of nowhere. Hopper, the good cop/bad cop I love. Joyce. The rest.  At the end of the last season the world of Upside Down, the evil opposite of all that is good in this small Indiana town, broke through and all the characters are in danger, the entire town, maybe the country, and maybe the world. 

The World Turned 'Upside Down' in Stranger Things

    2...President Donald Trump's latest bid to deploy the military on U.S. soil over local opposition is triggering a new conflict with blue state governors that is playing out in the courts as Trump envisages a country where armed soldiers patrol U.S. streets. 

At a gathering of military brass last week, Trump called for using U.S. cities as a training ground for troops and warned of an "invasion from within." To his critics, however, Trump's use of the National Guard amounts to a frightening use of force against Americans...

Had a nice time at the family Oktoberfest picnic last weekend. Didn’t get to talk to Dick much, though. Too much going on, and besides he missed the first part of the meal because of his class reunion. Sixty years. Man. Looking forward to getting him up to Grand Rapids to the Vietnam photo display at the Gerald R. Ford Museum. I wonder what it will look like to see those photos through his eyes. As he’s gotten older these past couple of years, the stories of Vietnam flow freer than they used to, and he shares more of the peril and the trauma of it. He saw some shit go down. 

Was glad to catch up with Brad this week on the phone. My brother makes me laugh when he plays the idiot. We talked about his dog, Ubu, the one that bit Uncle Bob in all the mayhem after dad died. Brad talked about hating badly-behaved dogs and now he is the kind of dog owner he hates. God, I laughed at him. I make a mental note to remember all that when I work on my memoir revisions in November. 

    3...President Donald Trump's unprecedented retribution campaign against his perceived political enemies reached new heights as his Justice Department brought criminal charges against a longtime foe and he expanded his efforts to classify certain liberal groups as "domestic terrorist organizations."

The development marked a dramatic escalation of the president's extraordinary use of the levers of presidential power to target his political rivals and his efforts to pressure the Justice Department to pursue investigations--and now prosecutions--of those he disdains. It's a campaign that began soon after Trump returned to office and one that critics see as an abuse of power that puts every American who dares to criticize the president at risk of retaliation...

We ended up watching two episodes of Stranger Things. The story is compelling, just like I like ‘em where the good guys are good, and the bad guys are wicked. Loriann went up to bed so I read a little. Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz. Great book. So powerfully written. Helps that the writer was an accomplished Hungarian journalist before the Nazis captured him and sent him to Auschwitz. He understands fascism and writes about it with such attention to detail, observing how the European tragedy manufactured by the Nazis broke the human beings around him in mind, body, and spirit before it finally murdered them. History is such a powerful teacher. 

    4...Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has waged an aggressive campaign against the media unlike any in modern U.S. history, making moves similar to those of authoritarian leaders that he has often praised...

...The tactics are similar to those used by leaders in other countries who have chipped away at speech freedoms and independent media while consolidating political power, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close Trump ally whose leadership style is revered by many conservatives in the U.S...

In the middle of my second chapter, I can barely keep my eyes open anymore. I head upstairs. Loriann is completely still in the dark of our room, her shape unmoving but for the rise and fall of each deep breath, so I change as quietly as I can into my pajamas and lie down. I hear Loriann on her side of the bed, the quiet sounds of her sleeping. Night surrounds me. All else is quiet.

I’m tired, so tired, but the minutes pass with no relief, no escape to the blessed forgetfulness of dream and slumber. Maybe I’m not comfortable enough. I turn over and fix the blanket and the pitch of my head on the pillow. Put my hand under the pillow. It’s cool there, but it doesn’t help much. Seconds drag into minutes. My mind won't rest. Something won't let go, irritating and persistent as the buzz of a mosquito. 

       1...those who were zip tied included children and U.S. citizens...

For some reason sleep won’t come. 

 

NOTE: All articles referenced were taken from the Associated Press website (apnews.com) on October 11, 2025: 

1. October 6, 2025. Tareen. Using helicopters and chemical agents, immigration agents become increasingly aggressive in Chicago.
2. October 6, 2025. Klepper & Toropin. Trump’s use of the National Guard sets up a legal clash testing presidential power.
3. September 26, 2025. Colvin. Trump escalates retribution campaign with charges against Comey and threats against liberal groups.
4. September 18, 2025. Spike & Riccardi. Trump’s moves against the media mirror   approaches by authoritarian leaders to silence dissent.  

Cariño, the Heart of Mexico

First impressions came at me quickly as I stepped off the plane and into the Mexico City airport. It’s always exciting to visit a foreign country and a capitol city, one of the world’s great cities in this case, a metropolitan area of more than 22 million people. My excitement matched the moment, though it took a few minutes for the speed of it all to slow down and for me to settle into all the newness and strangeness of it: the language, the music, the colors and art and movement of people. Sights and sounds so different than the airport in Chicago where I had been just a few hours earlier. 

I was in Mexico for my work with The Olga Lengyel Institute (TOLI), as a Holocaust educator and trainer of teachers. With the TOLI team, I would be helping deliver a week-long seminar for teachers from across Mexico at the Museo Tolerancia y Memoria, a beautiful, powerful Holocaust museum in Mexico City. Though I was there as a teacher, even a teacher of teachers, I felt I had to be there first and most as a student: it was my first trip to Mexico, and I had so much to learn about the people and places I would meet and visit for the next week. To teach the teachers of Mexico, I had to be open to learn. 

With colleague and friend Irvin Moreno-Rodriguez, Director of the Stockton University Sara & Sam Schoffer Holocaust Center

Though I had never visited Mexico, the experience wasn’t completely foreign to me. I had learned Spanish well enough to live in Spain and take a semester of classes during my junior year at Kalamazoo College and to help lead a digital storytelling workshop at a university in Costa Rica ten years ago. And though the Spanish of Spain and Costa Rica are very different than the Spanish of Mexico, I had been able to learn and practice the Spanish of Mexico on and off for a couple of years with colleagues, students, and families when I worked for Fennville Public Schools. Like many school districts and communities in West Michigan, Fennville is rich with families who trace their roots back to Mexico, whether it was generations ago, or families more recently arrived, or even families who travel between Mexico and Fennville every summer to help provide the necessary labor for area farms and orchards. So, once I caught up with the speed of it, speaking the language was like visiting an old friend. 

But as a country we don’t always treat Mexico as an old friend. Frequently we hear talk of Mexico in the news, often as a bogeyman, cast in the negative light of a fear-based political agenda. As part of this agenda, we have heard national leaders talk about Mexico and its people in ways that range from ignorant and dismissive, to downright dehumanizing. More recent stories in the news about Mexico and its people are even worse: racial profiling by federal officials and law enforcement, illegal detentions without due process, even downright harassment of people based on language, culture, and even skin color. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I interacted with the people I would meet traveling to Mexico. Would the tension and the hostility of the situation in the United States be a problem for me as an American in Mexico? Would I encounter tension, even hostility, myself? 

It turns out the answer was of course not. Instead, I encountered cariño, the heart of Mexico, in every person I met. 

Cariño is the cultural value of caring that is as ubiquitous and free flowing in Mexico as the smells and sounds of the food stands offering carne asada tacos and tortas for a dollar’s worth of pesos in the Parque de Bellas Artes, or the sight of colorful papeles picados strung along a restaurant ceiling and moving in the wind of a ceiling fan. 

Cariño is the belief that we should treat each other well in this world not for any reason other than the fact that we are here together, each one of us and all of us, as people who share this world together. Cariño isn’t Midwest nice, fakery, or false flattery. Its power is in its simple authenticity: taking just an extra moment to genuinely see and regard another person by looking them in the eye, sharing a smile or a warm word of greeting or gratitude, laughing together over some chance thing, or wishing that person a beautiful day and really meaning it. 

Market Stall in Mexico City 

On the phone with my wife after my first day in Mexico, I struggled to describe my experience of cariño—how moving it was to feel that the people I encountered truly wished me well as a fellow human being. It was something so simple yet difficult to put into words: I felt like everyone I met genuinely cared whether I was happy and content. I told her how lovely it was, and how much I wished we all experienced this kind of warmth in the places we call home. 

I understand that my experience in Mexico City was only a few days, and Mexico, like the United States, and every other nation on earth, can't be summed up after a few short days of limited experiences. Mexico, like the United States, has plenty of examples of the opposite of caring and compassion: it can be downright dangerous and deadly in Mexico like it can be in rural West Michigan. But that doesn't dismiss or diminish what I was experiencing in this metropolitan area of 22 million people. What I was experiencing, the quality I recognized as cariño, was real.

I thought of the difference between cariño, caring for other human beings, and the dehumanizing politics of fear, especially of immigrants. It was then I remembered a family I had worked with as a school administrator when a single mother of two young children, then a seventh-grade son and a younger daughter, relocated to the school district from their home in Mexico because the mother was doing what I would do, what any of us would do, when it comes to the safety of our children. 

The family came from an area of Mexico where drug cartel violence was always a threat but had become a very specific threat endangering her son. Young teenage boys like her son were often recruited by the cartels to join them, to work in the drug trade, and when recruited, saying no was dangerous and could even be deadly. So, when her son was in the sights of the cartel, her motherly instinct kicked in and she got her children out of Mexico to the safety of the home of a relative in West Michigan. They came to the country legally, on a short-term visa, but remained in the country after the visa expired. When I got to know them, they were in the country illegally, on an expired visa. But returning to Mexico meant returning to immediate danger, so they didn’t return. If it were my son, I wouldn’t either. 

And I would hope that I would find refuge in a country that had compassion and a sense of protection, even obligation, for the safety and well-being of a young person. Sadly, this is too often not the case. In fact, we’re seeing the opposite, the zeal of those who demonize illegal immigrants like this mom and her kids without knowing them or understanding their plight, to throw vulnerable people into cruel conditions of incarceration (Alligator Alcatraz?!) or to deport them into deadly danger. 

A sculpture outside the museum in Mexico City captures the angels and demons of our human nature.

I do support border security and the legal process of immigration; I also support the tradition of refuge and asylum. We don’t have to choose between one and the other. But we do have to choose whether we are a nation of compassion, or one of cruelty, whether we dehumanize others or look for the divine spark in every human being. 

It is too much to ask for cariño as a national trait in the way I see it in Mexico – our country values different things, efficiency, profit, individualism, for instance – things that make a national culture of cariño impossible, at least at this point in our national history. But cariño is not impossible in our individual lives, in our everyday interactions, and in the way we look at and look to treat the humans we come into contact within our communities. 

I would much rather build my relationship with my neighbor, any neighbor, be it a bordering country or the family next door, no matter their situation, on caring and compassion rather than fear. It has been fear for far too long. 

It’s time for us to try cariño.

The Righteous Power of Rock and Roll in Dangerous Times

 “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism, and let freedom ring…”  

Two weeks ago, Bruce Springsteen kicked off a new tour in England and opened the first concert by speaking the words written above into his microphone and across the arena and then the world, earning the immediate ire and attempted social media revenge by the thinnest-skin, least cool, least rock-and-roll president in American history, Donald J. Frump (or something like that), who is also the chief cause of the aforementioned dangerous times. 

As Springsteen spoke these words, thousands cheered, and the band launched into song, a boisterous anthem about America called The Land of Hope and Dreams, and those thousands sang along to what he had called the righteous power of rock and roll in dangerous times.

The Boss

Frump (or something like that) has lots of reasons to pick a fight with Bruce Springsteen and none of them are genuine. Instead, it’s just his normal sleight of hand: look over here at this cultural kerfuffle while I ignore The Constitution and strip Americans of things like rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are dangerous times, and Frump (or something like that) wants you distracted. 

Then the actual President of the United States of America, the man in the highest office of our entire land, took his predictably tarty leadership course when it comes to things like this and wrote a mean middle school kid social media post that event implied a threat to Bruce Springsteen for when he returns to the USA after this tour. 

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States:  

Frump (or something like that) is a tiny little wiener of a man, and Bruce Springsteen is The Boss, so whatever, but this kerfuffle did get me thinking about where the righteous power of art, music, and rock and roll can be found in these dangerous times. It’s too much to ask Springsteen at 75 to sing truth to power to the Joe Rogan bros who turned out in legions to vote for Frump (or something like that) the last election. But there must be art at this time to do what it does best: holds up a mirror, amps up the courage, sets the heart to beating, turns up the volume, and cuts through the shit. 

Rock and roll, art, music, has to tell the truth, and it’s a lifeline for a country that has been buried by lies and liars for far too long. When you live in farm country like I do, you learn to tell the difference between pig manure and a whole bunch of bullshit: one just smells bad, but the other stinks up the entire place. 

I grew up in a house that played music, and it included music from the 60’s and 70’s that was the art of protest and social movement. My dad was both a tough, somewhat conservative state police officer and a man who had the John F. Kennedy quote Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country burned into a small wooden sign that hung above the typewriter where he wrote his police reports. He also had a hell of a record collection: Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Edward Starr’s song War and Marvin Gaye asking all of us to think about What’s Going On. He could both work for the government and question it, and he liked to play his music loud when he came home and changed out of his police officer blues while the questions rolled across the house in the sound of Motown and rock and roll. 

My dad admired people like American folk musician Woody Guthrie who even had the words This machine kills fascists carved into his guitar. Woody Guthrie is gone. Bruce Springsteen is 75. Young people are social media comatose. We need the next generation to step up and pick up a guitar with songs that remind us of who we are and to teach the children well like my dad did for me, telling me to listen to the songs as he played them, and sing along as I learned the words. 

Woody Guthrie

I remember being in college and falling in love with Tracy Chapman’s 1988 debut album with penetrating songs of class consciousness. I listened to it nonstop for weeks. It spoke a powerful truth to me about the priorities of a country that turned a blind eye to poverty but tuned into a television show called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous that broadcast greed is good to the world. Hungry? Too bad. Lost your life savings in a scam? Hey, suckers are born every minute. Farm foreclosed? Tough luck. But just turn on your tv and check out the homes and yachts and lives of people you can only envy. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams was the show’s repulsive catch phrase. 

So don’t be fooled: when Frump (or something like that) speaks of making America great again, he doesn’t mean the Greatest Generation ethic of the 1950’s, he means the 1980’s when he was on lifestyle shows and partied at the Playboy mansion and everyone envied his wealth. He doesn’t mean the social consciousness of Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 album Born in the USA with songs like My Hometown that told the truth about the America: Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and empty vacant stores/Seems like there aint nobody that wants to come around here no more/They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks/Foreman says those jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back.” This is an America Frump (or something like that) has never known or cared about, except to hawk his cheap, Chinese-made wares and sew hatred and division. He’s one of the reasons the jobs left Main Street in the 80’s and one of the reasons Bruce set to work back then with his rock and roll in dangerous times.

The Undisputed Champion of Greed is Good

My best childhood chum Doyle, the guy I hung out and listened to rock-and-roll records with more than anyone else in high school, now has a podcast about music that is an every-other-week or so highlight of my life called Turntable Talk. In the most recent episode, which includes reviews of three of the top 20 albums on the Rolling Stone list of 500 updated at the end of 2023, he and his podcast partner reviewed Kendrick Lamar’s amazing 2015 hip-hop album To Pimp a Butterfly which includes the song Alright, a song that became the spontaneous official anthem for the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. Its energy and its message fueled the movement and met the moment. 

I listened to the album and the song again and it struck me that I haven’t heard much new music since Black Lives Matter that I would call protest music. Music these days is so much more driven to bedazzle social media than to beget change, more to beguile the ignorant than befriend the dispossessed. Where the hell are the protest songs? What could somebody like Taylor Swift or Tate McRae, Beyonce or Bruno Mars do right now to educate and motivate youth if their next albums had songs that speak truth to power? Joe Rogan wouldn’t stand a chance. 

In 1970 Gil Scot Heron wrote The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, in my opinion the most powerful protest song ever written. I hadn't ever heard it until my son Tucker, the musical librarian in our family, threw it on a mix he made for me a few years ago. It is a message to the masses then comatose to television culture that change will not come packaged as popular entertainment. We need a Gil Scot Heron for our times to write a message to the masses comatose to TikTok culture and streaming media. The revolution will not be an Instagram post. Frump’s (or something like that) ignorance cannot be met with apathy and ignorance in the form of cute dances and fart machines. I am beginning to think waking up the power of youth will require some rocking on, anthems that have more substance than a diss track between two rappers.

Closer to home Loriann and I caught a concert this weekend where the fantastic local blues rock group The Schrock Bros. played to an audience of forty or so at a small venue called The Lucky Wolf fifteen minutes from our house. We’ve seen them before, great musicians grinding out big music in small, rural Michigan towns. But last night it hit different as I thought about the power of art and music and rock and roll in dangerous times. 

Loriann and I grooved along as the bassist Andrew Schrock, wearing his Democracy Now shirt sang the following words from the title track of their 2023 album Faith in Love:

When all your worst fears start to reappear/ The movement of hate draws ever so near/Oh, you can count on me/You know I’ll be right there/To put in faith love once again.

The Schrock Bros. at the Lucky Wolf

During dangerous times, art, music, and rock and roll reminds us that the power of community and faith in love is the antidote to hatred and fear, it builds community, unites purpose and focus by raising voices in song, and gets us up off our asses. These are dangerous times, and we have to sing the songs that defy them. 

Sucker Bait

The most fun I ever had fishing was during high school on the St. Joseph River. My friend Bill and I had stopped by to visit his grandparents, and when we found they were gone he suggested we still make something of the trip, grabbing a couple of poles out of the garage and a few slices of white bread from the kitchen, and then headed through their backyard to the river’s edge.  

    To this day Bill would tell you I’m a terrible fisherman. He has every right to do so given the times he's tried to help me fish over the last forty years and I just tangled the line. He even wrote about how bad I am at fishing when he signed my yearbook in 1986, but he also wrote that I was a good basketball player and a damn good friend that year, so no hard feelings. And he promised in my yearbook to help me get a big fish on the line that summer. That day on the river he made good on his promise when we finally found a fish well suited to my incompetence: the suckerfish.

Catostomus commersonii: the common suckerfish

    Suckerfish swim just over the top of the muck at the bottom of the river with their mouth like a vacuum feeding off debris and decaying material the color and texture of the contents of a port-a-potty. For bait Bill took pieces of white bread and rolled them into tight little balls, hooked them on the end of a weighted line, and tossed them out into the water. Soon, a suckerfish was tugging at the end of the line and I had a great time pulling it in with Bill cheering me on in what must have felt for him like a proud dad moment. 

    I’d like to tell you that on that day I was a good fisherman, but that would be dishonest. Suckerfish just take whatever bait is there for them to inhale in a mouthful of mud. It’s also why they’re considered by many to be trash fish–they’re bony and can taste like the dirty bottom of a river in the hands of an inexperienced cook. 

   

 So I thought about suckerfish today when I read yet another news story of the current President of the United States going off on yet another rampage on social media. According to web sources, he generally posts a dozen times or more each day on his social media account, and each post is bait for the suckerfish, some contribution to the culture war that is the texture and substance of the contents of the bottom of a port-a-potty. I’d like to tell you that there is some higher skill or ability taking place in his leadership, but that would be dishonest. Trump is angling for bottom feeders with debris and decaying material, and people just inhale it without hesitation or discernment. That guy knows how to pull in a suckerfish. 

    Why does our President fish for suckers? As people read or hear what he has to say, they get distracted by his complaints about the Super Bowl or how hot Taylor Swift is or isn’t, making Canada the 51st state, Barack Obama or Joe Biden, the number of birds killed by windmills, water pressure, what book is in a school library, and a million-and-one other inane, insignificant thoughts that leak out of his mind like it’s a shoddy diaper. 

    On Easter Sunday of this year, the holiest day of the year for (perhaps) his most important constituency, evangelical Christians, the day of redemption and promise for a nation of the faithful, his message to the country as our President was nothing but debris and decay: 

    The truth is to carry out his grift, corruption, and lawlessness, the undermining of 249 years of the rule of law and 238 years of a country that was governed by the Constitution, he needs suckers to take the bait. He will break the law again when he accepts a $400-million airplane from Qatar. He will break the law again when he directs or permits his administration to arrest and punish people without the legal protections provided to everyone by our nation’s laws. He will break the law again when he shills for money in exchange for favor through whatever next snake oil he sells to the highest bidder. He needs suckers to be pissed about Bruce Springsteen instead of paying attention to what’s really going on as he breaks the law, lines his pockets, and moves our country towards fascism and authoritarianism instead of Democracy and the rule of law. 

Sucker, beware!

    He knows his fish have short attention spans and just suck and suck and suck for tidbits rotting at the muddy bottom. Close your mouth and open your eyes. Don’t take the bait. He’s playing you for a sucker.

The Distant Shore

Looked at the calendar the other day when March crossed over into April and was hit with the realization that I hadn’t yet done my taxes and time is starting to run short. April 15 is licking its chops. 

As a newly retired guy, I don’t pay attention to dates and details the same way I did for the thirty-year stretch I just finished. My life moves to different rhythms now, and mostly this new timeless way of living life feels like the daily gift of freedom and focus on work I get to choose to do, except when a forgotten IRS deadline looms and with it a stiff financial penalty. So, I made the mental note to get my taxes done.

And then I got pissed. 

I am going to sit and do my 2024 taxes as I do every year, and I’m going to write a check to the US Department of Treasury as I’ve had to do for the past several years, and I’m going to make sure it’s on time and done accurately, responsibly, and with a sense of civic duty. And then I’m going to mail it to the federal government so this new administration has the resources they need to continue to absolutely fuck up so much in this country that I care about, and so that their first priority is fully financed: that my middle-class taxes support the lifestyle of the ultrarich who are in line for a tax break and can write off yachts and private jets and thoroughbred horses as I pay an even higher percentage of my income to this madness as a middle-class retired public school educator and pray the people I love don’t lose a public sector job, or need health care, or struggle to buy eggs.

What does it mean to make America great again when it doesn’t mean protect the very people who make this country great? 

Liberty Obscured, April 2025

What even does America mean when it doesn’t mean the public square, and Main Street, and the public school, and universities, and national parks, and preschool programs for poor kids, and social security for the greatest generation, due process, civil rights, human rights, and the cornerstone of alliances that have helped protect and provide a measure of global peace and prosperity in the 80 years since World War 2 ended. 

I had a project to do in New York City on Monday last week, so on Sunday Loriann and I visited the 9/11 Museum and memorial built from the wreckage of the Twin Towers, to observe in quiet presence the memories of a day neither of us will ever forget. We were immersed for hours in the enormity of it, the twisted metal of skyscrapers and the concrete bones of buildings presented next to the small, personal artifacts of grief: eyeglasses, fire helmets, and high-heeled shoes. The stories of loss and the stories of heroism and humanity woven together in memoriam. One video showed tributes that came in on September 11, 2001, and September 12 and 13 and for days and weeks and months after from around the world – messages of love and support and peace and solidarity for the United States of America, a moment when global unity could have been the legacy of our leadership for a generation or more, making America truly great again.

And then I got pissed. 

This clown show of an administration has decided to fuck up global unity for trade wars and imperialist fantasies of taking over Greenland, and cancelling programs like the United States Agency for International Development that responds to natural disasters, and spreads and protects Democracy across the globe, and feeds hungry people and vaccinates poor children and works to spread peace and humanity which is so much cheaper than war but not nearly as profitable. The global unity that was so close in September, 2001 has never felt farther away in my lifetime, a distant, unreachable shore. 

And this is to say nothing of the damage this administration is doing to any dream of national unity, a ship that has long since sailed. They excel only at chaos and declaring war on the most vulnerable: immigrants, trans kids, and the poor, and war on expertise: books, thought, free speech and expression, academic freedom, and progress, as if there is anything to be feared from the values of Diversity, or Equity, or Inclusion-- from e pluribus, unum we have been moved to e pluribus, divisio: out of many, division.

After our visit to the 9/11 sites, Loriann and I walked from the memorial pools the few blocks of the financial district to Battery Park to catch a glimpse of Lady Liberty standing watch in New York Harbor as she’s done since 1886. It was a grey, rainy day in the city, and Liberty was obscured. She was there, still, but hard to see. A fitting metaphor as we wrapped ourselves against the cold wind.

THE IMMIGRANTS (Battery Park, NYC)

A large bronze statue in the same New York City park dedicated in 1983 provided yet another metaphor of our current situation. Titled The Immigrants, the inscription reads “DEDICATED TO THE PEOPLE OF ALL NATIONS/WHO ENTERED AMERICA THROUGH CASTLE GARDEN…” Castle Garden was the first American facility dedicated wholly to the processing and welfare of immigrants to America, and the statue shows humans from different countries arriving in America despite struggle and strife they left behind them and yet still also carried along with them to the hope of America: hope, perhaps the most distant shore of all. 

But in the first months of this administration the statue sits locked in a cage of fencing and ensnared in orange mesh. There is renovation taking place at Battery Park so doubtlessly it’s a protective measure, but the image and symbolism of immigrants in a cage did not escape Loriann and me as we walked past it.

In a few months I will visit Toronto for another work thing, a city I’ve always wanted to see. I was excited to buy my airline ticket to the city and to see the familiar airport code on my reservation, YYZ, also a song by Rush, my favorite band since childhood, musicians who still call the Canadian city home. When I’m on the east side of our state I love to stand at the Riverwalk in Detroit on the American side of the Detroit River and wave like a crazy man across the short distance to the large maple leaf flag of Canada waving back at me from the other side. It has always felt like waving at my neighbor and good friend. 

Last week Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told 41 million Canadians and everybody else watching that the old, long, stable friendship and alliance with the United States is over because of unreasonable, wrong-headed tariffs that are creating a global trade war, and because our current president prefers to support Putin and Russia instead of friendship and trade agreements with other countries that are necessary to any strength we think we have as a nation. As a proud American, I find it all embarrassing. 

In a smaller, more personal variation on this theme I talked to a colleague in Canada two weeks ago I had intended to meet on the American side of the border this month for some work we shared, but he shut the plan down telling me he’s hearing from friends of the nightmare now of Canadians crossing the border into Michigan and their treatment by US Customs/Border agents. He’d rather not run into a hassle at the border and will just stay in Canada and we will collaborate remotely. 

And then I got pissed.

I told him I owed him a beer later and an apology now. America is fucking up the easiest good will there is, and the shore I love to wave at from Michigan has never felt so distant. 

In their 1991 song Heresy about the fall of Communism when the USSR finally broke up, Rush asks over and over again about the relationship people around the world have to where we are and what’s next with the question “Do we have to say goodbye to the past?” and its only answer, “What else can we do?” And I find myself asking the same question with the same answer, though in reverse: then it was about the opening of borders in Russia for a promising future and now it is about the closing of borders in the United States for a future that looks bleak. Do we have to say goodbye to the past? And What else can we do?

What else can we do? 

One of the most important answers to that question is to do something to test the fiber and foundations of this country as established in our Constitution—assemble, speak, protest, and cause good trouble—and to do that in community with others who have also summoned the courage to make a sign and head to a public space to display it. If the Constitution is to have any muscle, like any muscle it has to be exercised: stretched and flexed and put to use.

So today I joined my wife and daughter and hundreds of other citizens in downtown Paw Paw at the Hands Off! rally against the madness of this moment in American history and governance. It was small, but it was something. It was small, though organizers reported twice the number of people showed up than were expected, and it was amplified by more than 1000 other rallies taking place across the nation today, some small, like Paw Paw, and some enormous, where thousands and thousands and thousands of people will have chosen to do something rather than stay silent and passive today. 

Getting pissed is the easy part. 

But that doesn’t get you far, and certainly not across to the distant shore.

What else can we do?