Announcing the Launch of Carey 6.0

 

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Announcing the Launch of Carey 6.0

Playa del Rey, CA - August 24, 2023

We are proud to announce the newest edition of the Carey. The old Carey that you have known and ‘loved’ has been retooled with a Classic look to instill comfort and familiarity. Continuing into a sixth decade of service, features that you know and depend upon have been upgraded and optimized for continued service. It is time to give the old Carey a new look.

The 5.0 Carey series expanded in popularity and increased market share, coming into its own by meeting wider demands and shouldering more responsibilities. The Carey expanded its user interface. The Carey faced challenges and adversity head on and continued to provide a creative responses and adaptability to demands. During the latter part of the 5.0 series, the Carey received local, national, even international recognition. While not all of the press and user comments have been positive, there has been a growing respect for what the Carey can achieve. We acknowledge that the Carey has showed signs of overuse, fatigue, and oversaturation. Still, the Carey has withstood adversity and continued to produce at a high level. 

The popular improvements of the 5.0 series have been retained in the new 6.0 series and yet this new Carey is bringing back some of the more flashy, creative eccentricities of the earlier Careys. For those longtime users who have thought the more recent models have become uniform and corporate, this new retro-Carey promises to bring surprising new features that might even shock users. We are even experimenting with a newly developed empathetic interface that some users have complained has been lacking in the previous versions or even absent from the Carey from inception. We think you are going to like this new Carey.  

Some have questioned whether the Carey should be discontinued or slowly phased out. Some have expressed the Carey looks tired and worn. The new Carey is being developed with a sleeker line and a more mature styling. We believe this classic Carey will be perceived as aged and wise, or at least comically affable. 

If you haven’t tried the Carey, this new 6.0 series is worth a spin. If you were a previous Carey user who has explored other models, now is your chance to become reacquainted with the Carey. The 6.0 Carey will surprise you!

Get re-acquainted with the new Carey today!

CONTACT:

Carey Corp.

Cupton8@gmail.com

http://creatingthe21stcentury.blogspot.com/

 

END

 

Previous Carey 5.0 Press Release

Creating the 21st Century: 2013

Are you really voting against abortion?

Please stop saying that you voted for Trump and other conservative politicians or will vote for Roy Moore because they are against abortion. If this is your one important issue, you should have been and should be demanding your elected officials:

1.      Increase spending on education, especially girls’ education.

2.      Increase girls’ sports and afterschool activities. Share the football money a little more.

3.      Provide clear and scientific sex education in all schools (public, private, parochial and home schooling). More than “keep your pants on” abstinence. At home, you would talk to your children honestly and openly about sex, sexuality, and procreation, especially your boys.

4.      Support Planned Parenthood and other agencies that provide education and medical services. Planned Parenthood prevents more abortions per year than your politicians and sign waving.

5.      Support research into women’s health issues and give tax breaks for research that reduces unwanted pregnancies rather than little blue pills.

6.      Increase health care and insurance for all Americans because having good health care decreases unwanted pregnancies. Provide Prenatal, Postnatal training and affordable childcare.

7.      Provide support for girls and women who become pregnant, whether planned or unplanned. If you don’t want abortions, you should ease the path for the child to be born.

8.      Provide support for mothers who want to keep unplanned children.

9.      Allow for easy adoptions of children whose mothers choose to not raise them.

10.  Assist men in becoming and remaining better parents. (Education helps) Enforce child support by fathers when they won’t.

11.   Reduce the stigma of unwanted pregnancies. In your community, schools and churches, you would fight for teens and young adults who become pregnant and reduce the judgment and condemnation of these women.

12.  Respect women and girls! Treat them equally, or maybe even better, than men and boys.

However, the actions of your elected officials, mostly Republican, have been adverse to all of these important actions to reduce and end abortions. If this is your primary reason for voting, you’re not getting the results you want from these people. You’d reduce more abortions by voting for Democrats and Progressives.

So, why are you really voting for Trump, Moore and the other old, white men who have no respect for women?

Towards a Sensible Second

[This is my response to the recent gun violence.]

As we celebrate another Independence Day and the anniversary of the Declaration, I’m thinking about Mr. Jefferson’s Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. It seems to me that everyone’s inalienable rights must have some limits when it threatens life and liberty, not to mention my pursuit of happiness.

When some wacko can use a legally attained weapon to take the lives of dozens of people pursuing happiness dancing in a night club, watching a movie premiere or even children going to school, something is wrong. That guy’s unalienable rights are infringing on others’ lives and liberties.

When the founding fathers put the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights, I can’t help thinking that they didn’t think an individual citizen should have that kind of firepower.

It’s important to remember the revolution started when the British decided to seize the weapons from a makeshift armory in that hotbed of revolution, Concord, Massachusetts. Paul Revere and some other guy (thanks Mr. Longfellow) rode out to warn the citizens who grabbed their arms to defend their rights and themselves. A shot was fired, heard round the world and a revolution began.

When the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment, this had to be on their minds. This was the freedom they were trying to protect. If the government got out of line and the rule of law collapsed, then the citizens could ban together in militias and fight off the government.

Remember, the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution were the response to a break down in the rule of law, a lack of representation many attempts at redress.

The language they agreed on for the 2^nd Amendment is:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Some folks read this as the right for every citizen to keep and bear arms. It doesn’t actually say that. People keeping and bearing arms is in support of a well regulated Militia. The murders in Orlando, Aurora, Newtown, et al. were not in support of a well regulated Militia. What I’d like to offer is a more sensible solution following what the Amendment actually says and offering a significant clarifying definition. (I’m not the first person to have these thoughts.)

A well regulated militia suggests an organized, trained and armed unit of citizen soldiers. Its purpose is to maintain and secure a free state. While this might mean the National Guard, I think that it suggests an organization that is not controlled by any government agency in case the government threatens the security of a free state. The militia is to be filled and run by the people.

The word I want to clarify is ‘Arms’. In this case, Arms is a shortened form of the word ‘Armaments’. While Arms and Armaments can mean many things, the principle meaning is offensive weapons intended to cause harm to humans. So for the purpose of the Amendment, I propose a definition of Arms to be limited to offensive weapons whose sole purpose is to harm humans. This would not include most handguns which have an intended defensive use or reasonable hunting rifles. (It seems to me sporting rifles should be sporting, something that will obliterate the animal or shoot it dozens of time in a second is hardly sporting.) It seems that the Founding Fathers weren’t talking about hunting rifles so much as weapons of war.

Therefore, here’s my solution:

Everyone should join a militia. I will happily join and pay dues to the Culver City Progressive Militia. I will train with them in preparation of a time our services are needed to secure the free state. Arms/Armaments should be held by the Militias. People can keep and bear their handguns and hunting rifles, but automatic rifles and other weapons whose sole purpose is to kill humans should only be kept and held by the well regulated militias. This could include rocket launchers, cannons and an F-16. I’ll put in my share for my militia to be well armed.

Armaments in this sense could only be sold to well regulated Militias. People would at first be asked to give their weapons to the well regulated militia of their choice. In time, it would become illegal for armaments to be kept and held by private citizens. The arms will be held by the militia and taken out for well regulated training.

As part of the well regulated part, there would be specific by laws as to when the militia would act in defense of the free state. While I can foresee some militias going rogue and fighting against our properly elected government following the rule of law, it would be a different experience than any wacko being allowed to have the fire power to kill and maim a hundred people at a time.

I think that the NRA, the anti-gun lobby and the courts should read the 2^nd Amendment and follow it. Or, they should change the amendment and let it adapt as the Founding Fathers intended.

[Please also read my series of essays on Violence in Entertainment and why I think we have an increase in the violent shooting. It begins with http://creatingthe21stcentury.blogspot.com/2013/02/violence-in-entertainment.html]

Driving Over the Hill

[This is one in a series of stories/essays I’ve written this past year. They are very personal and possibly universal. Comments appreciated.]

He was driving over the Sepulveda pass on his way to class. His Jeep was speeding with the flow of traffic.

Music was blaring. He liked it. Peter Gabriel. What was the song? He knew it, knew it well, but he couldn’t grasp the name. It was from NEW BLOOD, the symphonic album Peter Gabriel put out a couple of years ago. It was a compilation of his songs orchestrated with strings and brass, no guitars and no drum kits.

“The darkness still has work to do” he sang loudly. What was that last line? He often had no idea what the actual words were, but he sang the vowels and consonants with abandon. Without abandon? Whatever. “The darkness still has work to do, the knotted cords untying.” Yes, that’s what it was ‘knotted cords untying’. That’s a good line.

He put on his turn signal and shifted over to the left lane to avoid a slow truck climbing the hill. He wondered what his knotted cords were that still needed untying. He had a visceral sense of the knot in his stomach, but not words to describe what they were. He sang, “The signs of my undoing had been there from the start.” He knew that. He wondered if it was all planned or fated? When you set up a person with all of the flaws he possessed was fate simply inevitable?

He sensed on his right there was an erratic driver. For him, driving was an act of listening, intuition, mind reading, what used to be called ESP. Part of his brain was listening to every driver on the road near him taking in their thoughts, their feelings, trying to anticipate what they would do before they did it. This was his form of defensive driving. The car coming up quickly to his right was erratic. Slow, fast, trying to figure out the lane. Was this an aggressive driver, someone in a hurry, or just pissed off? Or, was it someone who was so unconscious and on auto pilot that they weren’t really paying attention. He tuned into the driver and realized no, it was fear. The driver was afraid of the road and responded by being wild and uncontrolled. Driving with fear was the worst and cautious fear was even more dangerous than fast fear. He edged past the driver and put another car between his and her. He knew it was a young woman who was fear driving. He checked to be sure he wasn’t just being sexist, projecting, no it was a young woman.

“In the Blood of Eden,” he sang, “lies the woman and the man the man and the woman and the woman and the man.” He stopped to wonder how the song went from darkness to the woman and the man. This blended with him and the woman driver. How was Peter putting these things together in this song? Brilliant. He thought of hearing this song when Peter Gabriel played the Hollywood Bowl. That was a great concert, best he had ever seen, heard, attended, no experienced.

His thoughts went to tonight’s concert. The crew was setting up for the concert in his theatre. He’d have to work it tonight. He got a sense of agitation, something was going on, there in Santa Monica. He tried to key into it as part of his brain was telling him it was just an association with thinking about the Peter Gabriel concert nothing more. He tried to see what was the matter. He sensed the producer of the concert was pissed off about something. Well, he was always pissed off. That’s not worth a worry. No, it was something with the construction workers and the baseball team around the entrance to the parking lot. He wondered if he should call. He tuned in and felt that his staff would work it out.

God, he was scattered. He needed to focus. He would need to write something in class today and he had no clue. He was so far from the book he was writing. He tried to key into where he was last working, have some idea with the book. The problem was the narrative voice. He’d never developed one. Being a playwright and an essayist, he’d never really needed one. But this novel needed a narrator, someone to help tell the story, to explain, but he knew that he tended to over explain.

A car merged in front of him and slowed down quickly. He had to put on the brakes hard. He had been watching this old man, sensing him, as he entered the freeway, but he had not anticipated him pulling in front of him. He simultaneously braked to not hit the old man in the Volvo while checking to make sure the guy in the black car behind him was paying attention and not spaced out or looking at his phone. The black car was slowing. He checked to his right, but he already knew there was a pickup truck there in the lane beside him.

He felt his feet in his shoes, his hiking boots, depress the brake pedal. He shifted his foot back to the accelerator and wiggled his toes. He wasn’t going hiking today, he just liked the shoes. They made him feel more rugged, athletic, like a guy who would hike the AT or the PCT. Is that what they called the Pacific Crest Trail? Was this a knotted cord?

And then, he was hiking with a heavy backpack over a mountain, the ocean was off in the distance to the left, the sun behind him to the right. He figured it must be the Pacific. He felt good. He took a long breath. The air was slightly chilled. This was him and not him.

He was back driving and thinking about hiking. He had to get out and away sometime soon. He needed a drivabout: get in the car, tell his wife he’d be back in a few days and drive. Driving and hiking. Of course there wouldn’t be camping, he might like the shoes but he wasn’t in for sleeping on the ground, no showers and being cold. But time away. Time to focus.

He needed to figure out what he’d write this morning. New ground or old ground? Something from the first book or the second? He thought about Fred from the second book, then Tom from the first. They were very different. Perhaps the narrative voice could be like Tom talking to his higher self, future self? no higher. Whatever that meant. His critic chimed in loudly, All knowing narrator, what the hell is that? And yet, he felt like there was some part of him that made sense of all of this better than he could.

A Tesla changed three lanes to the right and pulled within inches from the car in front of him closing the gap from four car lengths to one and half. He tried to key into the Tesla driver and found nothing. Teslas had recently supplanted in his mind BMWs and Lexus drivers as the biggest assholes on the road. He wondered why he couldn’t connect with the driver of the Tesla. Who was this person? Then the tesla pulled to the right cutting off the car next to him and sped away.

He had to merge into the turn lane to go from the 405 to the 101.

This is all a mess. I should be back at my desk outlining the first book. Trying to reengage with it. Why am I going to class? I have nothing new to say, I’ve missed the last few, working too much, he shouted in his brain. I guess I need to return to the pack.

I don’t really write plot. Just situations that express thoughts.

Then, he was in a pill box, shining the machine gun, making sure that it was in working order. It was mid-day. The attack should come that night. The French and Americans would storm the hill. Though he knew that they wouldn’t come during daylight, he still scanned the horizon trying to see movement, hear sounds, sense the energy of the attacker. He took aim on a bush about 75 meters away. A flutter. Probably, a bird. Maybe a scout. It was too early for an attack. He caught a glint of something shiny. He squeezed the trigger in and out for a short burst, ten bullets streaming loudly from the muzzle toward the shrub. He heard a scream and saw a figure fall to the right.

“In the Blood of Eden, the union of the woman, the woman and the man.”

God, I’m really distracted, he thought, too much going on in my head.

He took the Laurel Canyon exit.

The End of the World as He Knew It

[This is from a series of stories/essays that I’ve written this past year. They are personal and possibly universal. Comments appreciated.]

“It’s the end of the world as we know it,” the band sang, he forgot which one. R.E.M? He never liked R.E.M. He thought, Little did we know at the time how right they were. The world was changing, had changed, drastically since he was scream singing that song at some drunken party in the eighties.

He was spinning his “End of the World” playlist on Spotify through his Iphone. Spinning, what a quaint word. It used to refer to actual records spinning, pressings of vinyl. When music went digital, CDs and hard drives spun for a time. These days, only he was spinning.

A friend suggested he add a happy, poppy song by Lenka to his playlist. She sings “At the end of the world, I will be there with you. And, we’ll throw a party to celebrate the things we used to do.” It would be a great contrast with the many doom and gloom songs in the list.

This playlist was his favorite. It included Elvis Costello’s “Waiting for the End of the World,” The Turtles’ “Eve of Destruction,” Blue Oyster Cult telling us “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” and Dylan singing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”. He was most proud of the covers of classic songs, Diana Krall with “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” or Rod Stewart crooning “For All We Know” where he sings this might be our last moment so we must enjoy it. It was not strictly an end of the world song, but he liked the sentiment. It fit.

He wondered again about his obsession with The End of the World as We Know It. For him it was a less a fear than a fantasy. What would happen if all of this changed? When he thought ‘this’, it was easy to imagine civilization as we know it changing. He could even see his house, jeep, job and city going away. Losing people was a harder swallow, but why not? He tucked that image away as being too callous and unloving. He buried the entire thought underground and got on with the myriad of responsibilities rushing towards him every moment of his existence.

“It’s the end of the world as we know it.” Yeah, he thought, I’d be fine.

He was shopping at Smart and Final. He made a Smart and Final run about once a month for large items in bulk. His house didn’t have enough storage to shop at Costco. He grabbed a couple of those 2.5 gallon water containers. His wife had used two of them last week for some event. He needed to restock their earthquake supplies: one gallon per person for seven days, fourteen gallons. He put three more jugs of water into his basket. He was buying five to go with the two left in the closet. He thought, This is pretty silly, we’ll never need these. He thought, This won’t be enough if it really happened.

If the big one happened, if the ground really shook, he knew it wouldn’t be about the first week. Yeah, some unlucky people would die, be squashed by cheap and old construction, the roads would fail, and there certainly weren’t enough Red Cross workers to create shelters and feed the 8-12 million in Southern California.

The real problem would be week two. A major break on the San Andreas would sever all roads, water, electric, gas and data lines running across the fault. It would take months to recover. In that time, no amount of boats and airlifts would be able to supply enough water and food. Combined with the lack of communication, anarchy would be around the corner. Institutions and the very structure of society would not have the resilience to recover.

Standing in the aisle of the Smart and Final, he thought, Perhaps, I should finally wander into that relic of a gun shop on Washington Blvd and buy a gun, a few guns or maybe Home Depot for some gas cans and portable generator, a tent. Could we make it to the in-laws in Mexico?

Once again he asked himself, Is this fear or anticipation? Right beneath the surface was an excitement. The big one would bring big changes. Weren’t we ready for a reset?

The end of the world and its aftermath was everywhere: in the books he read (THE BONE CLOCKS, STATION ELEVEN), movies (MAD MAX, THE ROAD, WALL-E) and television (The LEFTOVERS, THE WALKING DEAD, FEAR THE WALKING DEAD) he watched. Even if someone wasn’t drawn to the idea like he was, it was impossible to avoid.

This new age seemed particularly fragile. We could easily be rocked back to the days before electricity. The dark ages seemed more feasible than keeping up this technological wonder that we called ‘life as we know it.’ It all seemed so very fragile.

He wondered what the catalyst might be: A Major Earthquake? Aliens? Zombies? Solar Flares? Perhaps a killer virus that wiped out ninety-plus percent of the population? Or just the stupidity of war?

He was a smart guy. He knew the reason the idea of an apocalypse proliferated the world consciousness was that the world as we knew it was changing. We’re predisposed to be afraid of change. Technology, communications, power structures, societal roles and prejudices, well everything, was changing. The world was not the world his grandparents had on the farm or the world his parents lived through in the fifties and sixties. The world was different now than it was than he was a kid in the late sixties and seventies. The past twenty years had seen so many changes, such as his Iphone wirelessly connecting to an internet, gay marriage, a black president. Change was happening and it was rapid.

He remembered a book he had read, DREAMING OF THE END OF THE WORLD: Apocalypse as a Rite of Passage. It was written by a Jungian Psychologist who had collected thousands of dreams from people who had dreamt about blowing ourselves up. They ranged from the horrific to the sublime. He wrote that we were creating a new myth to deal with our fear of change.

While nuclear annihilation/apocalypse/holocaust seems farther away, it has been replaced with a plethora and smorgasbord of cataclysms. He thought, Why not? Everything is so new. Of course, there is a shadow of fear and trepidation.

Technology was changing our minds, our perceptions of reality, how the world works, and our very thought about our existence. Physicists kept telling us that what we see is not what we get. The universe is happening on a level we can’t comprehend and all of this might just be an illusion that we constructed to calm our existence.

But as he had said the other day to his friend at lunch, “The cracks were showing in the illusion, and it could break.”

He had a dream the other night. There was a large pile of storage in a theater where he worked. The pile was smoldering. He knew it could burst into flame and destroy the building along with all of the people on it. Or, it would put itself out. But for some reason, he couldn’t put out the fire. All he could do was wait, prepare for the moment it burst into flames, a conflagration. Then, he would need to have a plan to get the people out of the building, to save the most precious items. But for now, all he could do was wait. He sat across from the smoldering mass and waited.

When he awoke, he understood the dream and the symbols all too well. He knew that the dream wasn’t about a fire or about the end of the world in a larger sense. It was about the end of his world. It was time to move on, change jobs, change his world.

He had this world view that he couldn’t shake. It went, when the universe tells you to change, you need to change. If you don’t, the universe will change you, and it won’t be easy. He wondered where this world view came from, some vestige of the wrathful Christian god he was brought up to believe in as a child? Still, he knew he was the god/universe and that larger part of himself was letting him know he needed to change.

He didn’t know how, but he announced to his larger self, to his universe, he was ready to change.

He was ready for the end of his world.

Their World Collapsing

[This is a series of stories/essays I’ve written this past year. They are personal and possibly universal. Comments appreciated.]

Nancy witnessed their world collapsing.

Her task was clear. She had to empty out her parent’s home to return it to the bank. 

Six months before, her mother had “gone to be with the Lord,” as her mother would’ve said. Two years before, her father had passed. They were binary stars, to be seen together, to live in relationship.

The irreparable damage had occurred and their world was slowly collapsing in on itself.

When possibilities lose their probability, the waveform collapses, entropy takes over, and everything erodes to nothingness.

Nancy sat on the floor of her father’s study surrounded by piles of paper. Five boxes lined up in front of her, a box for each distinct category: a box for financial records needed to close out the estate; a box for files to shred, those sensitive documents that must be destroyed to protect against identity theft. Nancy wondered whose identity remained to be stolen; there was a box of papers for the essential writings and work of her parents, their intellectual essence, papers that might still inspire and teach; and there was the trash, words and documents that could be discarded lacking in any remaining importance, energy or impact. Every page, every file got reviewed and sorted. Most landed in the trash.

As she worked on the papers, the contents of the house made its way out the door, helped by friends, family, colleagues and the strangers whose jobs consisted of collecting the detritus of some to help and mend others.

Her parents had lived lives of service and learning. Their work had touched many people. They had made an impact on others. As her parent’s passed through their world, they had changed many other worlds.

Nancy imagined the tens of thousands her parents had impacted in subtle and profound ways. Perhaps it was a moment in a checkout lane or years of friendship, their lives had touched others. This large group stood in contrast with the millions they would never meet or see. The possibility of those encounters ended and part of their world fell away. For one’s world includes both the concrete and possible. When the possibilities are no longer feasible those alternate experiences collapse. This huge volume of potential evaporated.

The casual encounters that had existed in moments and did not grow, the mention of their name, the passing on the sidewalk, every moment when her parents took in another, and every moment when they we’re seen as people standing in front of another; these moments faded and disappeared.

The men from Goodwill came to the door at the appointed time. Nancy showed them the scores of boxes and furniture set aside for them. The men grumbled about it being more than they were expecting and about the heat of the day. Resignedly, they loaded their truck taking more belongings from Nancy’s parents to anonymous receivers of goods and furniture. They would never know the energy and care her parents had given to those items, their stories or the times they sat on that chair, used those scissors or admired that painting. As these items left the house, Nancy was overcome by the feelings of loss and relief. And another part of the world collapsed.

Henry, a man Nancy had known since she was 13, piled up boxes of papers and books. He had trained with her father and considered him a mentor and a friend. In many ways, he was more heir and offspring to her father than she. To him was entrusted the papers and work of her parents. He had promised to go through them and share them with other colleagues and students. In this way, her parent’s intellectual work and ideas might continue, might remain. She helped him load up his red truck until it was as full as it could be. She hugged and thanked him. As Henry drove off with his red pickup full, Nancy felt another part of their world collapse.

As the house emptied, it felt as if it was being drained of the blood that had made it a home.

Debra came up to Nancy clutching a blue vase. With tears in her eyes she asked if she could have it. She went on to tell how she and Nancy’s mother had found this blue vase at a thrift shop. It wasn’t worth anything other than the memory of days when these two best friends would share lunch and conversation. Debra said, she’d paid the quarter for the vase, because she had a quarter and Nancy’s mother would have to break a dollar bill. As tears welled in her eyes, Debra wondered why she would remember such an inconsequential moment, but she remembered saying to Nancy’s mother, “This is my priceless gift to you.” Debra said, “This blue vase has no value. It is only valuable to me.” She asked Nancy if he could have it. Nancy knew that Debra would care for the vase until Debra’s daughter would give it away on a day like today. Until then it would hold the energy of their friendship. As Debra left with the vase and other priceless items, Nancy felt their world collapse some more. She knew that while this world might collapse, remnants of it would remain in other worlds for a time until they were no more.

Aunt Susan rifled through boxes and albums of photograph. She gathered up the ones she deemed to be “keepers”. She promised to have them scanned and distributed. One was picture of them as children feeding the ducks with their mother, Nancy’s grandmother, at the creek a half mile from the house where they grew up. Aunt Susan figured she was five and Nancy’s mother was eight in the photograph. It was taken at the start of long journeys for each of them.

Nancy helped Aunt Susan to her car, placed the boxes of keepers on the back seat, hugged her cousin, Susan’s daughter, and waved as they drove away. They were the last to leave. When she turned around, the house had begun to fade.

Nancy picked up the remains, tossed them in the pile of trash and began to sweep. It was the final task before walking away. As she swept, the house itself began to fade, the very walls and ceiling opened up until she was sweeping the weeds in a lot where a house, a home, had never been. Nancy turned and looked at the world around and watched it all fall away and erode until it was gone. And nothing remained.

Nancy evaporated out of their world to a world of her own, filled with family, friends, colleagues and all of those she might encounter before her world would also collapse and fade.

[I wrote this after returning from cleaning out my parent’s house and after a dream that put it all together. Names and my gender were changed. It came out that way.]

Thoughts about GO SET A WATCHMAN

I listened to GO SET A WATCHMAN on Audible read by Reese Witherspoon.
I also listened to TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD read by Sissy Spacek. I had last read it thirty or more years ago.
I chose this moment to dip back into the world of Maycomb, AL to coincide with my return to Jacksonville, FL, my hometown. I went there to clear out my parent's house.

GO SET A WATCHMAN is not a great book like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. And yet, it is an important book.

It's literary importance is as a road map of how an interesting idea and impression was taken and crafted to be the book it became. It is fascinating to see what was discarded and to suppose why.

WATCHMAN like it's progeny is also a political book. Had Ms. Lee stayed with this book and honed it, it could have become a very good book, but I doubt it would have been published or had gotten much notice. Being a Southerner, I appreciate WATCHMAN's complexity and complicity of response to race and the threat to the established way of life.

MOCKINGBIRD, while still holding subtlety and complexity, has a child's simplicity. Part of its power is that a child's point of view is clear, right and wrong is obvious to a child.

WATCHMAN attempts to illustrate how maturity and socialization leads us to the necessary evil of compromise. Cognitive Dissonance is the way of adulthood. While a mistrust of the other might be genetic, prejudice is honed and taught through experience and ambition. Racism is treated as necessary. Suggesting it isn't is naive and childlike. As any adult must know, it's obvious.

MOCKINGBIRD has been credited with having a strong impact on the Civil Rights Movement. Published in 1960 between Brown v. Board of Education and the Voting Rights Act, it provided greater awareness and understanding. Reading it now made me wonder what would have happened had Harper Lee returned to the story of WATCHMAN after publishing MOCKINGBIRD. Set some twenty years after MOCKINGBIRD in the late fifties, Scout gains a deeper understanding of the racism in her hometown. I wonder what would have happened if America had been confronted by a honed and completed WATCHMAN in the mid-sixties? Would it have helped explain the complexity of racism and helped us to transition more quickly?

While the publishing of WATCHMAN today seems like nothing more than a money grab by an atrophied industry, perhaps its view of racism might help us face the racism our country still deeply harbors.

I recognize the people in WATCHMAN. I still see them in America (and not just Southern America). It made me mad and embarrassed. And, I was thankful to be confronted by this more realistic/adult view of our society.