Slightly offbeat (as in beatnik), evocative of ‘50s cinema — think Audrey Hepburn and Brigitte Bardot — they still look great with skirts of just about any length and style, and with shorts, capris, athleisure wear, and boyfriend or skinny jeans.
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The names that populated his stories brought his remembered world to life.Hugh E. Morgan walking along Broad Street in the 1920s...John Roth, forever known to his peers as “Skunky Roth,”... Jim Parva, an umpire...who alternated between a falsetto and bass voice in calling balls and strikes...
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While visiting David in London in February, 2016, we took a train out to see Bletchley Park where Alan Turing and the “code breakers” developed the system to decipher the German codes during World War II, as depicted in “The Imitation Game”. Turing is considered one of the founders of modern computer science and we found the whole museum (with a reproduction of the original “bombe”; the huge machine used to decipher the codes) very interesting.

We spoke politics on the train back to London, evidently loudly. This was February and the primary season was in full swing. The Republican field was large and crazy. Women, seated across from us, overheard our conversation and politely interrupted. “We can hear that you are Americans. Can you tell us what is going on over there? What is with this Trump character?” We tried to allay their fears, assuring the women that he was a mere distraction and wouldn’t survive the primary season.

Alas, we were wrong. Shows what we knew. Silly us, we believed that Americans believed that their elected officials should show a modicum of decorum, not be bullies, business failures (if they are going to make their chief selling point one’s business acumen), serial harassers or liars. But name calling and bullying became the currency of the election season. No dirt was too low to sling, no stunt too revolting, even, as we now know, getting help from Russia.

Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, she was uniquely qualified to be the first female president of the United States of America. She is almost always the smartest person in the room, which undoubtedly made a lot of men uncomfortable. I’m told by people who know that one-on-one, she really listens, is warm and empathetic. She has been in the public eye too long and been labeled “unlikeable”, like so many strong women.

We still live in a chauvinist society. A society whose educational systems have been falling behind for years, leaving students to flail. Many no longer teach civics and are probably short on American history. Where individual communities dictate what is taught according to the norms of that community; where the hard separation between church and state, as defined in our Constitution, is softening.

There are vast undercurrents of resentment and Fox “News” feeds into the propaganda of white privilege, blurring the line between news and opinion. Every squawker’s opinion is stated as fact and the under classes are drawn to the hype. The Internet has become the engine to dessiminate misinformation and conspiracies. Any story Trump didn’t like became “Fake News!” Twitter became the way to communicate, avoiding what had been routine channels of communication. The old campaign methods were dying. Lines between fact and fiction were now blurred. Truth becomes hostage to rumors in this environment; conspiracies and “everyone says it”. Foreign bad actors and trolls seeded the divisions across Internet platforms with truly fake news.

In the midst of all this, James Comey, as self-righteous a person as ever lived, defied all FBI norms, and announced during election season, that Hillary had improperly used a non-government email server for emails, which had to be investigated. Investigate, if you must, but to go before Congress and announce this to the public sows doubt in people’s minds about the honesty of a candidate. Of course, nothing classified was found, but doubt was planted and to this day, Trump falsely wants to “lock her up” and look for the emails.

We all gave money, worked for her, couldn’t imagine in our wildest dreams that the reality show scam artist could win. Then, Comey found more emails, in an investigation of Anthony Weiner. It was now 11 days away from the election. And he just HAD to tell Congress that he had opened up the investigation again. I came out of a lecture on the Brandeis campus and saw the alert on my phone. I was stunned and cursed out Comey, like every other person supporting Hillary. This opened a Pandora’s box for her. And of course, nothing amiss was found, but for any undecided voter, it cast doubt on her credibility. The exoneration came in small print.

The polls tightened, but she was still in the lead. Eight years earlier on election night, we had gone to a party, then rushed home so we could be on the phone with our children as the polls closed in California and savor and celebrate that joyous occasion together, as we elected Obama, our first Black president, a man of dignity, empathy and grace.

Eight years earlier, David had gone to my brother’s in Ohio, a swing state, a few days before the election, to help get out the vote. Though we were still at the party, he called us as the polls closed  and Ohio went for Obama. He sat at a noisy bar where the mayor of Cincinnati happened to also be. We congratulated him for his effort.

This night, November 8, 2016, Dan and I sat in silence in front of our TV, watching in dismay as the big states turned red. Still no pundits would call the election.

We heard from Vicki in California. She sat with a suicidal friend and tweeted out numbers for suicide hotlines.

At 11pm, Dan decided to go to bed. He’d had enough, couldn’t watch any more. I got washed up, but would stay up later to watch as the polls closed on the West Coast. At that moment, David texted from London (where it was 4am the next morning): “I love you! I don’t call often enough, but will call tomorrow.” His message felt like the end of the world was at hand. We didn’t realize it at the time, but in a manner of speaking, it was.

 

 

Weejuns represented my journey in college to becoming my own person.
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