The Storm Clouds of Tyranny 

As we approach the 250th anniversary of our country, let us celebrate, but also let us not overlook the shadows of oppression and tyranny looming on the horizon.  I fear that we are, tragically, strikingly like the common German folk of a century ago who tended their shops, tilled their gardens and relaxed in their favorite hofbrauhaus as the shadows and dark terror of  Nazism took over their land and snuffed out their freedoms.    

Unfortunately, that dark shadow of tyrannical terror has now fallen over our nation.  Fear paralyzes our Senate of 100 members and our House of 435—535 elected officials, each of whom should be shouting from floors of Congress, screaming from the rooftops, marching in the streets, and calling for the removal of our domestic Nazi terrorist and tyrant Trump. Yet there is silence. Deadly silence. Are we, like the common folk of Germany,  going to tend our gardens, sip our wine, enjoy our daily routines in blissful ignorance of the Trump tyranny as its chains of oppression bind us?  

If we are to celebrate our nation’s 251st birthday, we must fight, we must resist, we must demand  removal of the tyrant now,  lest we mourn in darkness. 

Good Battles Evil in Htrae, Earth's Mirror Image Twin

Hello, my loyal blog readers. In just four weeks you will be able to step through the gate to Htrae, Earth’s mirror-image twin. Join the  good people of Htraea in their battle for survival against the evil forces of Natas and his Nellaf Slegna.   Here is a snippet of the adventure that awaits you. (Divad has just turned down Natas’ offer of worlds, indeed universes, to rule.)

“Natas was accustomed to being rejected, indeed spurned, by mere mortals, but each rejection was worse than the previous one. He had no patience for Divad,but did not want to kill him. He would be more useful imprisoned than dead. ‘Have it your way, Divad. See if Mā-I can save you.’ Natas gestured toward the pine forest below. Upon that signal, two Slegna Nellaf emerged from the forest, leading two scaly serpents on leashes. Released from their tethers, the serpents slithered toward Divad, their yard-long tongues flicking in and out.

‘Save yourself, Divad. Jump off the cliff. Save yourself. Don’t you trust Mā-I? Didn’t he give you the power of Pure Light? Where is your Mā-I? These serpents were condemned by Mā-I to crawl forever in the dirt. They hate him and they hate you.’ Natas burst into shrieking laughter. His breath stank of rotting flesh. His tongue, split like those of his serpents, flicked in and out of his mouth.”

The Gate to Htrae will be available in approximately 4 weeks at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers. This book is designed for young people, middle schoolers, and above--as well as for imaginative adults who enjoy sci-fi and fantasy. 

Illustration @sheilafein

 

A NOVEL ADVENTURE: THE GATE TO HTRAE

Since my high school days, I have fantasized about being abducted by friendly aliens and taken to strange worlds in other galaxies. It’s been nearly seven decades and I’m still dreaming, sitting in the hot tub two or three nights a week, staring up at the starry sky patiently waiting to be taken on a tour of the universe. The UFO has not arrived and probably never will. Refusing to abandon my fantasy of travel to alien worlds, I have invented Htrae, Earth's mirror image world in another universe. 

An ancient gate rises majestically on the hillside above fifteen-year-old Alex's home. It is locked— rather odd since there's no fence or wall. For the umpteenth time, Alex tries to open it, just for the sake of opening the useless old gate. As his younger brother Drew taps a melody on the thumb latch, Alex sings a strange little ditty. A golden key appears and floats to Alex's lap. When he picks it up, his hand becomes translucent. Shocked by the sight of his bones, veins, and tendons, he throws the key down. Drew hollers, "Don't be a scaredy-cat. Open the gate!" Summoning his courage, Alex unlocks the gate, steps through… and disappears. He has entered Htrae, where he will ally with his Htraean twin, Xela, in the battle against evil Natas and his Slegna Nellaf.

Readers will want to accompany Alex on Htrae. Mind you, even though Htrae is at war with Natas and his demons, readers will be safe. Pure Light will protect them throughout the adventure of reading The Gate to Htrae, my young adult novel available in March. The Gate to Htrae is an enthralling young adult novel that transports readers to a mirror-image world in the far reaches of the universe. Get ready to embark on a fantastical adventure with Alex as he sets off on the journey of a lifetime. Introducing readers to demonic warriors, fallen angels, and more fantastical elements, this is a can't-miss hit that you won't be able to put down. The Gate to Htrae, available in March in paperback and as an ebook.

Illustrations @sheilafein

When I Am Gone

My wife is 62.  I am 83.  Statistical tables, insurance actuaries and common sense tell me that I will die long before her.  I often worry about that.

For example, a few days ago I struggled to replace the thin 21- inch fluorescent bulbs in the light fixture mounted over her desk. Once I inserted the pins of the bulbs into the sockets, they resisted my efforts to turn and lock into place. Without locking they would not light up. I was afraid of breaking the bulbs, but I proceeded to hold a tube firmly between my thumb and index finger and carefully exert enough force to twist it into place. The bulb lit up. I repeated the process with the second bulb and replaced the plastic cover.  

Task successfully completed, I asked myself, “When I am gone, what will Leila do?”

Or when the garage door would not shut because the safety light beams had been bumped out of alignment, telling the door that there was an obstruction.  

I asked myself, “When I am gone, what will Leila do?”

Or when the front door would not shut and lock properly. I was able diagnose the problem, replace the strike plate and solve the problem. 

 Again, I asked, “When I am gone, what will Leila do?”

Don’t get me wrong. My concerns are not sexist. Leila is a very successful and accomplished woman. She is not clingy or helpless or dependent. 

She just isn’t mechanical. 

On one fix-it occasion I posed the question directly to her.

“When I am gone, what will you do?” 

 “I’ll hire a handyman.”

She knows I’m the needy one, that I need to be needed.  So she added,

 “But Kerry, there’s no replacing you.” 

© copyright 2021 Kerry Gough

Joe Biden and Sleeping with the Devil

 

The criticism of Joe Biden when as a senator he worked with racist southern senators in order to get their votes for civil rights legislation reminds me of a political lesson I learned as an attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.  It was 1966 and I was just a few months into my first job after law school.  My area of responsibility was Southeastern Mississippi, which included Kemper County, the site of frequent physical and verbal intimidation of blacks who tried to register to vote.

 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized the Attorney General to appoint Federal Examiners to register voters in areas where county voting registrars refused to register Blacks and redneck racists intimidated Blacks who wanted to register by threats of physical violence, beatings, cross burnings and termination of employment. The population of Kemper County was seventy-five to eighty percent Black. But only a small number of Blacks were registered to vote.

The evidence cried out for appointment of Federal Examiners. I wrote a memorandum advocating such appointment to my boss, John Doar, Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division. The memorandum cited abundant reports of beatings and verbal intimidation of Blacks who tried to register, of registrars refusing to allow them to register and of their being turned away by sheriff deputies at the courthouse steps. One witness said that as he approached the courthouse a deputy stepped forward and said, “What you want here, boy? Nothing here for you but a jail cell in the basement.”  I was confident that my memorandum proved beyond any doubt that the extent of pervasive discrimination in Kemper County justified appointment of Examiners.  My research had been impeccable and nothing had been overlooked. I submitted my memorandum, confident that the Attorney General would agree to certify Kemper County.

Or so I thought.

Weeks passed by and I heard nothing. Then one day my section chief said, “Grab your file. We have an appointment with Doar.”

We entered Doar’s office. Doar and two or three supervising attorneys were seated around him. 

Doar said, “Kerry, I have read your memorandum. It is a fine piece of work.”

I was delighted to receive that compliment from my boss. Justice would be done.

“Do you know,” he asked, “who has to approve our budget?”

“Congress,” I responded, wondering what that had to do with certification of Kemper County.

Doar continued, “Do you know who sits on the Senate Appropriations and Judiciary Committees? 

“No sir.”

“Senator Eastland of Mississippi chairs the Judiciary Committee. Senator Stennis of Mississippi is a ranking member of the Appropriations Committee.”

Everyone’s eyes were on me, waiting to see if I was getting the drift of his remarks, waiting to see if the cartoon light bulb would illuminate over my head. But it did not click on. I remained silent.

Doar continued.  “Senator Stennis’ family home is in Kemper County.”

The light went on. In all my hours of research I had failed to discover that Kemper County had been the Stennis family home for generations. And if I had discovered that fact, I think that as politically naïve as I was, I would not have appreciated its political significance.

I had made a good case for justice, but I had ignored politics.

I returned to my office, disappointed and disillusioned. It was clear that the Blacks of Kemper County would continue to be beaten, threatened and disenfranchised in order to keep the Civil Rights Division from being fiscally punished by racist United States Senators.

            I was a naïve young attorney. 

         And I believe it is naive to criticize Biden for having worked with racist senators 

in order to get needed legislation passed.

         Sometimes you have to sleep with the devil.   

                                                               ****

(Adapted from Policy Sci 101, chapter 33 of Dear Jeff, a memoir)

© Kerry Gough 2020

 

(Kemper County was not certified for Federal Voting Examiners until October 31, 1974, more than seven years after my memorandum had urged certification. God only knows how many Blacks were beaten and denied the right to vote in those seven years.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

PANDEMIC ENTERTAINMENT PROTOCOLS

 My wife is a very sociable person. She loves to entertain.  We used to host lovely dinner parties once a month, inviting two other couples, friends, family, business associates or clients. The pandemic put an end to those lovely dinner parties.  Since mid-March no one, including daughters and sons and their families, has set foot in our home with the following exceptions:

• Our wonderful housekeepers of 30+ years, MC and Bernice, have returned. Each Friday, before they arrive, Leila retreats to her upstairs office and shuts the door.  I flee to the golf course.  We are probably being overly cautious, for MC and Bernice are super-careful and wipe down all surfaces they have touched with virus killing solutions.  But you just can’t be too careful nowadays.

• We allowed Bay Alarm techs to install a wireless radio alert so that we could cancel our land-line phone service.  They were masked, but the techs were in over their heads. And we were unhappy, to say the least, to have three strangers in the house. One tech was here for 8 hours and when he left the system was severely compromised. The next day a tech supervisor, masked and apologetic, had the system working within 30 minutes.

• Female guests are allowed entry when needed, as described below.

Leila, growing weary of social isolation, devised and we never deviate from the following entertainment protocols.

• We entertain in the back yard. Guests enter via the walkway along the side of the house.

• Before they arrive, Leila has to remind me to unlock the gate. (Perhaps because I am a bit of an introvert and entertaining on a hot evening in the back yard is not something for which I yearn, I hope that the locked gate will discourage entry.)

• The limited space in our back yard prevents seating more than four people if we are to maintain proper social distancing.  Therefore, we entertain only one couple at a time. We could do two couples, but Leila refuses to place one of the second couple behind the orange tree and his/her mate next to the garbage bin.

• The guests receive their food in separate serving vessels (plastic quart containers with the deli food we ordered) and compostable wooden utensils and plates.  Absolutely no dipping into a common dish!

• We supply bottled water and wine to our guests, although I have to be reminded to provide them with a corkscrew. You see, since Leila insists on serving the very best, most expensive wine from our modest cellar, I hope that guests will be too polite to ask for an opener.  Before I got married, my wine choice was Gallo Hearty Burgundy.  That resulted in my wedding vow never to bring boxed wine into the house. I try to be eco-friendly but I am not allowed to recycle a bottle which once contained expensive wine by filling it with an inexpensive wine.

• No one is allowed in the house for any reason whatsoever.

• Exception:  female guests may enter to use the bathroom.  Men are invited to step behind said orange tree.  

With these protocols in place, we have entertained several times.  Our guests enthusiastically thank us for the dinner party, a welcome break to the social isolation they too have suffered.

The men are especially enthusiastic.  There is something very masculine and gender-affirming about peeing outside, in nature, even if it is behind an orange tree in an urban back yard.

(Thanks to Nick Hoppe, an SF Chronicle columnist, whose wonderful August 19 column on the same topic inspired me to share the Gough protocols.)

© 2020 Kerry Gough

 

White All Over

During the summer of 1965 in Mississippi, while I spent my days talking to Black parents about enrolling their six and seven year old children in the local white school pursuant to a court ordered freedom of school choice plan,  my (former) wife Judy conducted a “freedom school” in the back yard of Clarence and Millie Hall’s home. The Halls, a Black family deeply involved in the civil rights movement in the Delta of Mississippi, had taken us in for the summer.  Judy’s school was not connected to the formal Freedom Schools that opened all over Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964, but rather an informal gathering of young Black children designed to help prepare them for enrollment in the formerly all-white school.

            Early one morning before her school was to start, Judy desperately wanted a bath. The hot, muggy days at the Halls, just a few hundred yards from the Mississippi River, had taken their toll on her. She fantasied about taking a long, cool shower.  There was no bathtub, no shower, no running water whatsoever at the Halls.  But Millie had a washtub.  Judy and Millie bailed buckets of water from the Hall’s 50-gallon storage drum and filled the washtub. The water had cooled overnight and promised to be refreshing.  Judy donned her bathing suit and stepped in. She luxuriated in the cool water as she sponged it over her head and it ran down over her body.

             The kids began to arrive. Perhaps they were early. Then again, perhaps Judy had lingered too long in her washtub bath. The children approached, but held back, reluctant to come too close.  They stood and stared and stared and stared.

Two of the little girls held hands, gathering courage from each other. Finally, one of them, wide eyed, her voice full of wonder and astonishment, spoke.

 “Why Mrs. Gough, you’re white all over.”

Up to that moment, for all that the little girl knew, Judy was black under her regular clothing. She had accepted Judy as one of her own, white face notwithstanding.  

It is unlikely that the little girl could define superficial, but she knew it when she saw it.

(Adapted from Dear Jeff, the author’s memoir about cross racial adoption and fighting discrimination from Monterey to Mississippi.)