Betsy Robinson

After I saw actor Ben Platt perform on the Tony Awards, I couldn't buy my ticket to Dear Evan Hansen fast enough. (I should preface all this by saying that I worked in the theater as an actor and playwright for more than a decade, so my awe was informed by knowing how almost impossible some of what he did was.) What I saw in Platt was a combination of musical genius, vocal and acting depth, technique—equal parts spontaneity and control—that delivered a once-in-a-lifetime performance that might end up on my list of spiritual high points in the theater—which has only one other member, Peter Brook's 1970 Broadway production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

"I want to be guaranteed to see Ben Platt," I told the box office clerk.

"His contract runs out in November," he answered.

"Okay, what's the first ticket where you can guarantee he's in the show?"

Three hundred dollars later, I walked home stunned. But it was once in a lifetime. Read More 

In The Book of Mormon, eager-beaver boy Mormons aspire to save humanity by spreading their truth to "unwoke" people across the globe. In the performance I saw on Friday, actor Steven Ashfield (not the actor in this recording), playing "Elder McKinley, the tap-dancing, light-switch-turning Mormon district leader in Uganda" (see profile) leads the cast in a rollicking number called "Turn It Off," lauding the wisdom of violently "crushing" any homosexual and other feelings. The audience roared with laughter — a recognition of the universal futility of experiencing anything approximating "good" by self-crushing.

During intermission, as I gazed over the packed house from my seat near the front of the orchestra, I couldn't help but hear the loud cell phone conversation of a woman a few rows back: "I just don't find it funny," she said irately. "And I really dislike the actor playing the queer. His mannerisms are annoying, and there's a lot of things they don't get right. It just isn't funny." The conversation was all the more interesting because a few minutes earlier, several people sitting next to me had been complaining about the lack of cell service in the theater. But that aside, I began to wonder about her and her need to pronounce her displeasure. And I've thought about her more in the ensuing days. Read More 

Much as we like to fancy ourselves superior to sheep and cows, we really have a lot in common: we are a herd species. We have leaders and followers, and to spook us requires a well-placed surprise that the "influencer" members pick up, and ka-boom, stampede. To control us, merely convince the same influencers, and we follow en masse. It's the key to many things — for instance, politics. But first the entertainment. (To get a point across, I've noticed that good shepherds open with enticement.)

I just saw a matinee of Pulitzer-winner Paula Vogel's play Indecent, a timely story about our herd propensity. In 1907, a young playwright named Sholem Asch wrote a play called God of Vengeance which was frightening to his Jewish colleagues because it exposed Jews as flawed people. "You can't show this," they rail at him. Nevertheless, the play is put on, is a big hit, tours throughout Europe and eventually lands in New York . . . where it is censored for an uptown production. What is cut out is a love scene between two women. Subsequently, it becomes a play about a Jew who runs a whore house, abuses his lesbian daughter, and disrespects the Torah. And the show is shut down and the cast jailed.

The New York herd was spooked — something had to be done, somebody subdued, trampled, shut up.

The reason that I think this play is important — particularly in our time when political correctness has become a divisive topic — is that it movingly expresses the value of (and price paid for) speaking truth, no matter who may get offended by it or who may use it to bolster arguments for bigotry. In my opinion, this is the tightrope negotiated by all artists who are working to express something bigger than they are. If you really say it, somebody is going to be infuriated.  Read More 

First some definitions:

In Buddhism, bodisattvas are people who are enlightened but stay with us suffering mortals to help, even absorb our pain, in order to aid us on our individual journeys to enlightenment (oneness with All That Is).

And bardos are an intermediate state of existence between two lives.

It took a day to hit, but when it did, the recognition of Abraham Lincoln in Georges Saunders's wonderful novel Lincoln in the Bardo as a bodhisattva made me feel like laughing and crying at the same time.

What an imaginative, unusual, and nicely bawdy book, but I'm not sure you would be drawn to it if you have no background in Eastern traditions or predilection for, or merely willingness to suspend disbelief about, the notion that life exists beyond what we experience in our bodies or that in more ethereal realms thoughts create reality and that energy can move like great literal ocean waves, causing experiences and communications between the realms.  Read More 

Like many other people, I've been stymied by the fact that facts no longer seem to matter: you can have two photographs of crowds side by side, and someone can call the smaller gathering the larger one with impunity; you can claim to have done more than anybody in history and in fact have done next to nothing; there can exist historical footage quoting you as saying one thing . . . and then the opposite, and you can claim to believe whichever film is more convenient according to the moment. As a friend recently said, "What do you do when it's clearly raining outside and it's now perfectly acceptable to look at it and say, 'It's not raining'?"

Here's what I've done: I've begun to learn a new language and a neuroscientific explanation of all of the above.

Although it is only 168 pages and subtitled "The essential progressive guide for the issues that define our future . . .," in Don't Think of an Elephant (revised and re-released in 2014 by Chelsea Green Publishing), cognitive scientist George Lakoff has written an opus, not a quick-fix, sound-bite-loaded little guide. Often it suffers from too much detail, but I give it much praise for the sections that explain the brain science of why facts don't matter to many voters and they will vote against their own interests. And the last chapter, "How to Respond to Conservatives," is worth the cost of the book. Read More 

"At no other time in history," said Amor Towles, author of A Gentleman in Moscow (which I've swooned over) and Rules of Civility (which I will read very soon), "at no other time have fiction writers been held to a higher standard of truth than people who run for political office."

Big laugh! We were a packed audience at a talk Towles was giving at the National Arts Club located on Gramercy Park South, one of the most elegant addresses in New York City and a fitting venue for a writer as elegant as Towles in his perfectly fitted brown pin-stripe suit. He continued: "Someone running for the highest office in the land can say anything, the most outrageous lies, and be excused, yet if I get an address wrong in a novel, I receive a million irate emails."

Another laugh. Read More 

The first thing I ever wrote and published was a review of Tell Me Another Morning by Zdena Berger. I found this autobiographical Holocaust novel while browsing in my local public library when I was 13 or 16; the time is hazy. I would hang out in the quiet of this small-town oasis, explore, and for a little while feel like who I really was. There was a newsletter booklet on the librarian's desk and it said they'd publish reviews, so I wrote one. Although I read Tell Me Another Morning 53 or 50 years ago, I still remember it. It was a story about surviving by listening to stories.

I was catapulted into this memory by yesterday's The Hill report:

As National Library Week begins April 9, the Trump administration and Republican Party have launched an unprecedented attack on the institution by submitting a zero budget request for the Institute for Library and Museum Services.

Libraries are important and I am appalled that the government of the country that people run to, the "land of the free," would defund them. Libraries are part of our national infrastructure. They allow people who have nothing to have access to everything. (Just take a look at this list of a few famous people, including Lincoln, who educated themselves with merely a library card.) Libraries allow those who are interested to learn the horrors of not resisting when humans act inhumanly (Yes, Sean Spicer, Hitler really did use chemical weapons on his people). Read More 

This morning’s contemplation: Sometimes you have a sudden awakening—a feeling of lightening; a knowing that, although each of us is ultimately alone, we are something much huger than any one person, something so powerful we would explode if we felt it all the time. If you have felt this just once, it is there for you. It’s like connection to a great mother’s placenta. For me, there was such an awakening during the 1/21 women’s march. And I believe there was such a worldwide concentration of this experience that it formed a global placenta for all of us babies who are aware of it. So if you get tired, sad, defeated, whatever, just REMEMBER those feelings.  Read More 

This is a sincere question and I have no answers.

I am not going to be able to "get over it" and "move on" when every day something happens that sickens and scares me. But I also am not a progressive fundamentalist. I sicken and scare according to each event on its own merits.

I have not found everything sickening and scary.

• For instance, after hearing a lot of different opinions, I decided that General James Mattis was not a bad pick for secretary of defense. He opposed Trump in his hearings. He seems to understand more about Putin and Russia than his boss.


• Likewise, from reading Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution and learning more than I've ever known about trade, I see renegotiating agreements as a positive thing.


• Infrastructure projects, if done in a way that they benefit real people rather than the top 1%, will be a good thing. But I'm skeptical about the "how."


• After hearing this riveting On the Media interview with Tim Weiner, Times reporter and expert on the CIA and FBI, I believe that James Comey might end up being a national hero.


• My fiction has been known to tick off the political correctness police, and I abhor any constriction of First Amendment rights—including the rights of people who say things that sicken and scare me.

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[Updated 2/5/17]
From the New York Times

Earlier in the day, at the White House, Mr. Trump shrugged off the sense of anxiety and disarray, suggesting that there had been an orderly rollout. "It's not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared," he said. "It's working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over."

Imagine:

• You have risked your life to work for the USA, gone through years of scrutiny, obtained a legal visa, a green card.


• Bombs exploding around you, you have run for your life, crossed treacherous waters crammed in a precarious boat. You have endured the death of your children, your spouse. You have lived in mud, waiting. For 2 and 3 years, you have answered questions. You have obtained a legal visa.

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The Point of the Women's March? This seems to be a question, so I'd like to answer it personally:

I marched in the first women's NYC movement in 1970 and vividly remember red-faced men on the sidelines screaming, "Get back in the kitchen where you belong." It was scary. I was 19 and was there because two "older" women at the company where I was an intern ordered me to come with them. Many of us were angry, but only in correlation to how scared we were.

When I marched on 1/21/17, it was an epiphany, an ecstatic event. I learned that everything had indeed changed for the better. I was not scared; I was elated. Police wore pink hats, smiled, and were helpful. The crowds were humongous and peaceful. The world joined this march. It was not merely a march to protest Trump's misogyny. It was not merely to fight for women's equal pay, right to determine what our bodies will and will not do, or any other single issue.  Read More 

Thousands of us gathered at today's massive #WritersResist #LouderTogether demonstration at the 42nd Street NY Public Library. The purpose: to send a message as only a mob of angry writers can to Donald Trump that we will not stand for any incursion or threats to our First Amendment right to free expression and a free press. The afternoon was stunning with stories. Highlights:

(1) When founder of the movement Erin Belieu recounted the night she was making dinner for her excited teenage son who wants to be a historian and Trump came on the TV imitating the disabled reporter—whose disability is similar to her son's . . . and his reaction to seeing this.

(2) PEN America president Andrew Solomon's story of hearing from another writer whose country had become fascist. "You're shocked now," the man said, "but you'll be surprised at how little you react six months from now." And Solomon's vow to "Remain shocked!"

And (3) Rosanne Cash's reading of Leonard Cohen's lyrics to "Democracy" (1992):
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I've been posting and processing my reactions to this election through a fictional character, Zelda McFigg, the protagonist of my novel The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg, on Facebook—writing letters to Zelda and her answers. Writing through a surrogate frees me, but yesterday's post felt more like a conversation between my true self and me:

Dear Zelda,
I'm so sad. I watched President Obama's last press conference and he seemed resigned to what's about to happen. I wanted fury. I wanted something to change our direction and save us from the abyss of unbridled lies and hate.
Sincerely,
Dismayed

Dear Sad Child,
Ah, the desire for Superman—somebody to magically swoop in and make everything all right. Don't you realize, it is this same desire that invited what and who is entering? There is no Superman. There is no magic. But if you really listened to what Obama said, you may have heard the source of real change, real power, real safety: It is up to each of us to individually hold to what's dear to us. Having made all these mistakes and having suffered the rather severe consequences, I have learned there is only one dear thing: a fierce, maybe even furious, Love.
Yours sincerely,
Zelda McFigg

What is Fierce Love?

I've been contemplating this, and the descriptors come like river water:

Fierce Love is grounded in the knowing that kindness, compassion, and basic goodness are more important than I am. But the energy of Fierce Love is like a raging fire—unstoppable.

Fierce Love has respect for others—people, animals, plants, our planet—recognizing that all have worth. So the intent of Fierce Love fire is not vengeful; it is not hate-based or in any way disrespectful. But it is aligned with values that are more important than even the person through whom it is flowing.

Therefore Fierce-Loving people have already surrendered their lives to this energy.
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It's been decades since I've faced racial and ethnic hatred up close, but when these things happen, they scar you. Hence, my fear at the proliferation of swastikas following our 2016 presidential election. I don't like feeling this kind of fear, and education helps lower my heart rate as I stay engaged. I read Bernie Sanders's Our Revolution because I needed educating, and if that is your goal, this is the book—whether you are a Bernie true believer, a Clinton supporter, or a Trump voter whose motivation was to take a sledge hammer to a system that is not working and is ignoring millions of people.

The first section of this book is a methodical educational walk through recent politics—absolutely excellent, clear-eyed, and optimistic (particularly the Burlington story which comes near the beginning of the book), no matter who you voted for! If you can ignore your particular biases, you will receive an education in oligarchy, which has been the direction of U.S. politics for a long, long time—whoever has money gets their way.

The political power of the oligarchs goes well beyond their campaign contributions and ability to influence elections. As a result of their ownership of media, think tanks, university chairs, and political front groups, they influence American public opinion and domestic and foreign policy in ways that few realize. (190)

The second section of this book is a manifesto about what exists now and how to create something else for all of us who want fairness, the ability to make a living, safety, and acknowledgement. There is a lot of detail, heavy facts—so much knowledge that I wondered how Sanders can contain it without having his head explode as mine kept threatening to do. But education is not easy. And it can be pretty scary to learn the why and how of oligarchy. At times, I felt panicked and overwhelmed. But I would rather feel those things than not know. There are reasons behind Sanders's campaign talking points about the top 2% owning all the wealth being a bad idea, about why raising the minimum wage is a good thing and how it can be done, and the section on reforming Wall Street is an alarming "Paul Revere"-type equal-opportunity indictment of Democrats and Republicans that left me gasping. Read More 

I am calling on my Ashkenazi ancestors for support. Literally—please hug me! I need your resilience. You, who migrated from East Africa to Central and Eastern Europe. You who originate from the early indigenous tribes of this region.

According to an analysis of my DNA, I know that you were solo thinkers who, while others were procreating like rabbits, set about figuring out how to domesticate seeds and feed everyone. You must have been strong. Very strong and focused and confident to ignore the rabble and stay with your task—although, obviously, some of you procreated or I wouldn't be here.

When I was young, all I saw was a lineage of craziness that I disowned.

At age 65, living in turbulent times, I feel your music. There are many musicians and artistic people who came before me. There are Russian Jews who survived the pogroms and settled in an unknown land. There are intellectuals who, although they may not have been so good at people skills, revered knowledge and wisdom that is no doubt a legacy I enjoy.

I call on you to embrace me. Read More