CURRENT EVENTS

IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S ME

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I hope to take my third quilt up to be quilted this week—that’s it above while it was about a third complete. I am waiting to hear when I can deliver it because I need to send my laptop in for repair. Again.

I have been using a Mac daily since 1990 and until this one I never needed a repair. I replaced my best laptop at the age of nine, about 112 years old in computer years. But this one I am working on right now is still under the original warrantee. Months ago, the screen started pixilating in dark areas. Shadows in images were no longer black but turquoise or peacock green or cobalt. Or white. Bold Helvetica showed up as outline text. The weird appearance got worse and worse. Eventually the entire screen turned to pastel snow in horizontal bands.

Imagine trying to explain to a young tech person what’s wrong. They kept wanting to see it, or have me email or send them something. I kept having to explain again that the computer was unusable and I have no smart phone. (One of my sons keeps trying to remedy that by giving me an iPhone. I probably should let him.)

Anyway, my computer went to the Apple store where it was diagnosed as troubled, then it was sent away, and shipped back to me good as new inside a week.

But now it’s doing it again. I can still use it, but I figure it’s heading again toward pastel snow. I hope if I send it in they will see the problem.

I’m not going to freak out about being without my laptop for a week. I no longer teach so I am not depriving students of immediate access. But just in case you try to get ahold of me in the next week or so, just so you know, my computer is in repair limbo.

It’s not you, it’s me.

WET

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Yesterday there were deer tracks at the base of our path to the beach. This morning a coyote had passed by. We went out a bit late, and I did not put up my hair or even put on a hat because it wasn’t cold or windy, just cooler and damp the way we like it. I unzipped my jacket on the way north because the rising breeze hit my back and I was warm. By the time I thought I should put up my hood, it was already wet inside. I figured that was okay. I hadn’t worn the jacket to keep warm but because it was wet.

As a rule, we do not mind the wet. If we minded we would live someplace else.

We walked for an hour, north and then back south. On our way north, Gary mostly followed the tracks of the coyote on the sand, and I mostly walked in the basalt rubble lining the shore. The tide came right up over the sand and several feet into the rocks last night. I found plastic bits and bobs and leftovers from fireworks, a piece of quartz, a crumb of sand-buffed green glass, and a shell. On the way home, we walked with Tammy. She was dressed for weather—hood, rubber boots—though she’d decided it wasn’t worth digging out her rainproof pants. Like my hair, her pants were drenched by then.

IMG_4966.jpgRecently, juvenile gulls have been following me. One trailed me up and down the sand and over the rocks for a quarter mile the other day. I told him that was not wise. Humans are not to be trusted, and I would not feed him even if I had anything in my pockets he could eat. Yesterday, one came quite close, stood no more than four feet away and waited for a long time for me to do something. What?

There are too many dead birds on the beach, it seems to me. We always see one or two when we walk a few miles. This time of year the new seabirds who have failed to learn their survival skills start showing up, juveniles who have starved or done something stupid. Fully grown juveniles hunker down and call weep-weep at their mothers, who are done feeding them. After the first big storm or a crazy tide, youngsters are swept off Castle Rock and wash up onshore. This morning we saw a dead bird every five to fifteen yards, and that is not typical for late September or really at any time. We haven’t had a storm and many of the dead are adults. Three banded birds in as many yards—a seagull and two cormorants. Gary says the banding may have been enough to stress them, and there is no typical, no normal anymore.

Climate change has killed billions of birds, and millions of species are already lost or threatened.

But this morning we came home dripping and I sat comfortably watching the pale sky dissolve into pale sea. The osprey was fishing, the tide rushed in, waves swept across the sand, which has not begun moving back out into offshore bars.

IMG_4969I have finished a third quilt earlier than I expected (the last four rows of stitching completed Tuesday evening instead of Friday). Late next week I will carry it to Linda, or whenever she’s finished the two I pieced in August.

Yesterday I cleared out my work space, sweeping my work table, sorting colors into warm and cool and black&white bins, and finding storage for miscellaneous sewing and knitting tools and notions. The floor seems oddly empty without fabric spread out in patterns. The scraps from stitching and trimming—trimmed threads and bits of fabric less than an inch wide—made a heap on my work table. I dug through the little pile once more and then tossed it into a waste basket. I hope Gary might pluck out bits and pieces to save for birds’ nest-building in the spring. If we composted, they could go in as “carbon” I think.

The season is changing, weather and focus. There was Open House at the high school last evening, but we were at a restaurant visiting with mostly-retired school employees. Are you enjoying retirement? Some confess to having a hard time, missing students and the work. Some are simply relieved to stop. A friend in the former group is in the hospital. After decades of deep involvement and commitment to teaching, the way we are let go can seem rather heartless. And the way those with social connections are privileged and allowed to continue on their own terms can seem unfair. Six months out, I am still uncertain where I stand.

My kitchen floor is cleaner than it’s been in almost thirty years.

Change is inevitable. Not all of it is good. Not all bad.

 

GRETA IS PAYING ATTENTION

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“This is all wrong.” Her words begin at 23 minutes, but the NPR article covers most of her speech [or here]. It is a brief, compelling speech. She is an amazing young woman, angry because it is impossible to be anything but angry. She has been paying attention, she will not forget, and she will not forgive.

I have been told throughout my life: Don’t get upset, don’t be angry, don’t lose your temper. Smile more. Find your inner peace. Yes, all that honey zen-like wavering.

As has been said: If you are not angry, you haven’t been paying attention.

Have the courage to be angry about the right things.

We walked long this morning. Our continued commitment to the coast is perhaps a foolish act of faith, an unwillingness to abandon our home, an unwillingness to abandon hope, and unwillingness to accept evil, and unwillingness to move to higher ground because so many in the world do not have that option.

 

WATCHING THE STORM ARRIVE

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Sometimes I worry about things. Mostly I have worried about that shallow and selfish threat to my country. You know, that one. But since I unsubscribed from cable television, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, I push those concerns to one side.

I worry about global warming and the use of poisons to control insects and weeds and people. I worry about cancers and the danger of a tidal wave washing my home away.

I worry about population growth, a concern when I was a little girl and the earth’s human population was less than three billion, and now approaching eight billion. I worry about the loss of empty spaces, that human need to use everything.

I worry that a journal that has short-listed my story for a year only means to tease me. I worry about using too much purple or not enough in the quilt I am making. I worry that the sweater I should be re-knitting for my grandson will be too large or scratchy or no longer colors he likes.

I worry that so many people are reading my post “Why You Don’t Want to Become a Teacher” and will think I did not love teaching and miss teaching with all my heart.

I worry about the way our community is changing into an industrial zone without people to care for more than income.

I worry about my brittle bones and bad teeth, my weight gain and poor posture, and finding better medical care.

I worry about the power flickering in and out, but not too much.

Those are the easy things.

I worry about dying and leaving my husband alone or being left alone by him dying first. I worry about alienating my daughters-in-law, each a dear person but not my daughter. I worry that I have failed to help my sons know and trust their obvious courage and kindness.

I worry my older granddaughter will throw herself on the floor in a fit of embarrassment. I worry that my younger granddaughter will be the pretty sweet girl people take advantage of. I worry about my grandson’s attention.

I worry every time my husband calls across the house to tell me about reading that someone we know has died.

And then.

And then I sit down during a break from the sewing machine and steam iron, push color aside, and I watch the storm come in. The waves are higher than yesterday. The sky is dark and brilliant. Rain makes a variable patter on the skylights. There is thunder far away, but the ocean roars steady over all.

And the sky is sometimes aqua overhead and bright and then darkening with heavy clouds. Those who only value the clear sunny days as good weather must have simpler lives than mine. This is the world I love.

My worries are fruitless, pointless, fussing. The storm is inevitable, inviolable, and out of my control. It is coming onshore.

I watch the storm arrive and I am not worried.

 

SPLC

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Girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama
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Tomorrow marks 56 years since the murder of four young girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

In an act of terror intended to intimidate civil rights activists who used the predominantly African-American church as a rallying point and organizing hub, Ku Klux Klan members planted a bomb under the building’s steps. It detonated at 10:22 a.m. on Youth Sunday, a day dedicated to the church’s young members, as the girls were getting ready for the service in a basement lounge.

During his eulogy for Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the attack “one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetuated against humanity.” He sent a telegram to then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace, telling the state’s top segregationist: “The blood of our little children is on your hands.” Ten days before the bombing, Wallace had railed against the civil rights movement to The New York Times, saying, “What this country needs is a few first-class funerals.”

At that time, violent attacks on the civil rights movement were common in the city dubbed “Bombingham.” And in the decades since, researchers have laid bare the lack of political will to convict the perpetrators. Then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover blocked prosecution of the case, and the FBI failed to turn over thousands of files to prosecutors, including audio surveillance tapes.

It wasn’t until 1977 that the first of four Klansmen behind the crime was brought to trial by the state attorney general and convicted. Two others were convicted in the mid-1990s by federal prosecutors. A fourth died before being charged.

In 1987, the SPLC would win an unrelated, and unprecedented, civil lawsuit against the same Klan group behind the bombing – the United Klans of America – after its members murdered a black teenager in Alabama six years earlier. The $7 million verdict bankrupted the United Klans, finally putting an end to the group whose members had also killed civil rights activist Viola Liuzzoafter the Selma-to-Montgomery march.

The church bombing did not slow the momentum of the civil rights movement. Instead, it became a seminal moment that galvanized the nation and propelled the  movement forward. Ten months later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing segregation in public accommodations.

Today, a memorial named “Four Spirits” stands across the street from the church with the inscription “A love that forgives” – the title of the pastor’s undelivered sermon on Sept. 15, 1963.

During this moment of remembrance for these and all civil rights martyrs – those who fought and died for freedom – let us reflect on the words of Dr. King’s eulogy for the girls. And let us remember that deadly violence remains an all-to-common response to the ongoing struggle for civil rights in this country:

“[T]his afternoon, in a real sense [the four girls] have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows.

“They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. … They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.”

The Editors

VOLUNTEERS

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This is the chair that eventually traveled south all the way to the end of our beach, and then was tossed up on the basalt inner shore by the tide. Our Adirondack chairs are locally made of wood.

Looking west out over the ocean this afternoon, I can sometimes see Castle Rock, point-six nautical miles offshore. Then the fog folds it back into invisibility. We are both fond of this, I think, the cooling fogs, the way fog signals a very hot day someplace else but not here, at least not yet. Overhead, even when we first went out for our walk this morning, the sky shows blue, whisked by thin clouds, but north, south, east, and west over the ocean, the mist makes a pale mask on the landscape.

This morning we picked the plastic remains of (illegal) fireworks—some pieces are quite sharp—and four golf balls, our fourteenth Bic lighter of the season, plastic packaging and trimmings from cord and twine, candy wrapper, broken cutlery, unidentifiable objects lost off boats, broken beach toys. It’s what we usually find. I found glass melted and sharp from a beach fire. (Glass does not burn and neither does plastic.) Just as we turned for home, I found a sand-frosted disk of clear glass.

There are many dead birds. It is the season of juvenile gulls following after a parent, heads ducked in a vain effort to appear small when they are fully grown. Peep, peep, peep! they cry. Sometimes their parent leads them to food and walks away. Sometimes you can almost hear an adult gull sigh with exasperation. Get a life. The sea lion’s skeleton has finally come apart, and we saw a dead otter, which may have fallen victim to the unusual surf.

Yesterday, Gary went out and retrieved four beach chairs that had been caught up by high waves on the day before. The tide had not been especially high that day, but before the people picnicking on the sand south of us had to move, twice, he was already saying there was a danger of sneaker-waves. A true sneaker rages up fast and far beyond where you might expect. “Sneaker” because of that and because it is often silent.

The surf went from a single breaker in the morning to ten foot swells and many rows of breakers almost a half mile out on that day. It was a roaring sea with lots of plankton washing in from the recent heat and upturned colder water. The first sneaker swept up over the onshore sand bar that had been dry and untouched for weeks. A hundred-yard sweep of rushing saltwater. The next waves swept higher, all the way into the rocks bordering the green—the sort of massive sweep we expect in November not in summer. It was not yet even high tide.

This brings me to the chairs. A drunken party of tourists staying in one of the rentals a block east of the beach brought them down onto the sand early last month and then never bothered to return them. Four plastic chairs, two pistachio-green plastic Adirondack chairs with rounded backs and two tan plastic Adirondack chairs with fan backs. We hoped for a long time that someone would retrieve them or steal them, but no one did. Some visitors used the chairs and some pretended they were not there. The owners of the rental house closest to the chairs ignored them.

We certainly didn’t want them.

However, when we we discovered that one of the chairs had been swept a quarter mile south and then up onto the rocks, Gary went out again. He carried each of them into the front yard and hosed off the plankton. We have gathered up broken plastic chairs in the past. One way or another, he decided, we would be carrying these chairs up—either whole and still useful or broken into pieces.

IMG_4582At top, violets we did not plant in our front garden. They are what gardeners call volunteers, like the little spruce growing in the center yard and the salal coming up everywhere. Nobody planted it, it just grew.

When we had our ocean-side deck removed earlier this year, most of what was revealed was bare, empty sand. The naturalized crocosmia (the orange montbrecia) came up immediately and the wild rabbits like to lift up on their hind legs, bite a montbrecia leaf halfway up, and then eat from there to the tip. They nibble dandelions down to the ground. Good bunnies.

Lately other plants have sprouted: lamb’s ears and wild roses and violets. The roses are prickly and I pluck them out with care, but the others are a lovely surprise. So far the rabbits have left the violets and lamb’s ears alone. We like to think they are gifts from the rabbits because we never shoo they out of our yard.

HIM

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I have avoided saying his name or typing it, but it’s really getting out of hand now. I am sorry if you disagree. (Trump supporters had best avert their eyes. I am not likely to devote another post to this particular issue. It will be safe to return.)

Recent events and words are beyond offensive. They seem to me insane. And much of the medical community and even the more circumspect political analysts are speaking out. This is not my rant, but another’s. Follow the link and read the whole thing.

from James Fallows in The Atlantic, “If Trump Were an Airline Pilot”:

“But now we’ve had something we didn’t see so clearly during the campaign. These are episodes of what would be called outright lunacy, if they occurred in any other setting: An actually consequential rift with a small but important NATO ally, arising from the idea that the U.S. would “buy Greenland.” Trump’s self-description as “the Chosen One,” and his embrace of a supporter’s description of him as the “second coming of God” and “King of the Jews.” His logorrhea, drift, and fantastical claims in public rallies, and his flares of belligerence at the slightest challenge in question sessions on the White House lawn. His utter lack of affect or empathy when personally meeting the most recent shooting victims, in Dayton and El Paso. His reduction of any event, whatsoever, into what people are saying about him.

“Obviously I have no standing to say what medical pattern we are seeing, and where exactly it might lead. But just from life I know this:

  • If an airline learned that a pilot was talking publicly about being “the Chosen One” or “King of the Jews” (or Baptists or whatever), the airline would be looking carefully into whether this person should be in the cockpit.
  • If a hospital had a senior surgeon behaving as Trump now does, other doctors and nurses would be talking with administrators and lawyers before giving that surgeon the scalpel again.
  • If a public company knew that a CEO was making costly strategic decisions on personal impulse or from personal vanity or slight, and was doing so more and more frequently, the board would be starting to act. (See: Uber, management history of.)
  • If a university, museum, or other public institution had a leader who routinely insulted large parts of its constituency—racial or religious minorities, immigrants or international allies, women—the board would be starting to act.
  • If the U.S. Navy knew that one of its commanders was routinely lying about important operational details, plus flaring up under criticism, plus talking in “Chosen One” terms, the Navy would not want that person in charge of, say, a nuclear-missile submarine. (See: The Queeg saga in The Caine Mutiny, which would make ideal late-summer reading or viewing for members of the White House staff.)

“Yet now such a  person is in charge not of one nuclear-missile submarine but all of them—and the bombers and ICBMs, and diplomatic military agreements, and the countless other ramifications of executive power.

“If Donald Trump were in virtually any other position of responsibility, action would already be under way to remove him from that role. The board at a public company would have replaced him outright or arranged a discreet shift out of power. (Of course, he would never have gotten this far in a large public corporation.) The chain-of-command in the Navy or at an airline or in the hospital would at least call a time-out, and check his fitness, before putting him back on the bridge, or in the cockpit, or in the operating room. (Of course, he would never have gotten this far as a military officer, or a pilot, or a doctor.)

“There are two exceptions. One is a purely family-run business, like the firm in which Trump spent his entire previous career. And the other is the U.S. presidency, where he will remain, despite more and more-manifest Queeg-like  unfitness, as long as the GOP Senate stands with him.

“(Why the Senate? Because the two constitutional means for removing a president, impeachment and the 25th Amendment, both ultimately require two thirds support from the Senate. Under the 25th Amendment, a majority of the Cabinet can remove a president—but if the president disagrees, he can retain the office unless two thirds of both the House and Senate vote against him, an even tougher standard than with impeachment. Once again it all comes back to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.)

“Donald Trump is who we knew him to be. But now he’s worse. The GOP Senate continues to show us what it is.”

REPRESENTATION?

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Yesterday there was a march and protest in Portland. Our younger son and his wife work in the theater, which means that they are nearly always downtown on Saturdays. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is on stage at the Keller. The A.P. reported: “Flag-waving members of the Proud Boys and Three Percenters militia group began gathering late in the morning, some wearing body armor and helmets.” Proud Boys are designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The white nationalist American Guard also said it would have members in Portland. Local news reported, “Steven Howard, a Vancouver resident who was the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, told KOIN 6 News he will attend the protest on Saturday.”

The tweeter-in-chief: “ ‘Major consideration is being given to naming ANTIFA an ‘ORGANIZATION OF TERROR’, the president wrote from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey on Saturday morning. ‘Portland is being watched very closely. Hopefully the Mayor will be able to properly do his job!’ ” The actual marchers—such as Proud Boys, self-described as the all-male western chauvinists—are bigots, but the president didn’t say a word against them.

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler said of Trump’s tweet: “Frankly, it’s not helpful. This is a potentially dangerous and volatile situation, and adding to that noise doesn’t do anything to support or help the efforts that are going on here in Portland.”

The president expressed concern only about those protesting the protesters, Antifa, but it is the Proud Boys who threaten to return to Portland streets every month: “Sooner or later, [Portland mayor Ted Wheeler] will run out of money and his counterparts in government will no longer take him seriously. The path forward for Mayor Wheeler is simple, free your city from the grip of Antifa, take direct and meaningful action.”

In the mean time, police seized weapons from and arrested thirteen participants. None of these people represent Portland’s community. Only four minor injuries were treated and reported by medics on the scene, but it was a tough day for police officers.

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“We receive criticism no matter what. It’s either too much, not enough, you arrested this group and not this group,” Portland Police Bureau spokeswoman Tina Jones said. “It seems like some people are keeping score, and that’s not what it’s about on the law enforcement side. One hundred percent, it’s about public safety.”

My husband and I worried about the police presence and their safety, ordinary shoppers and shop-keepers, working people, and the safety of our family. We worry because Trump has taken sides and fanned the flames of violence. Again.

We don’t think any of these extreme groups are representative of our nation.

An Op-Ed in The Washington Post reveals how a fake article by a fake “real live worker” calling himself Archie Carter, not only outwitted (biased) fact checkers to find publication but “sheds light on the way right-leaning commentators depend on the voice of an imagined white working class to legitimize and advance their own viewpoints — viewpoints that are often opposed to those of the real working class.”

Before the gunman killed 22 people, authorities believe he wrote, “I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

This polity — white working class, racist, xenophobic, misogynist, homophobic — is just as imaginary as Archie Carter.

We are better than that. A lot better. Most all of us descend from or are immigrants in the United States. We get it. The right, especially the reactionary extreme right we are seeing in Congress and in the White House and all over certain media outlets, is wrong about who Americans are and what we believe.

Working class people overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton by a 10 point spread. “Reagan actually lost union and low-income households to Jimmy Carter.” Working people, actual middle class and working class people are not so racist, xenophobic, misogynist, and homophobic as the Right likes to believe.

Most Americans do not share these vile views. Most Americans find the Proud Boys Western Chauvinists, Patriot Prayer, KKK, and Antifa, who protested in Portland to be despicable. (We might even call them “deplorable.”) Most Americans are opposed to the hate speech we hear coming from the White House. Most Americans did not vote for him and continue to oppose him.

Yet, he still lies: “I got it approved. Veterans Choice,” Trump has claimed more than eighty times, of the program signed into law by Obama in 2014. Thousands of lies, lies every day, every time he tweets or talks. Such bizarre things come from him that it’s hard to joke about what he might do. Nothing is too outrageous. He would like to buy Greenland. Yes, really.

Political satire begins to sound reasonable. The Borowitz Report suggests that Denmark might offer to purchase the United States. Perhaps we could benefit from national health care, education, and reasonable compromise in pursuit of common goals? Heck, let’s give ourselves away. Isn’t that what we are doing already?

Denmark, come and get us!

 

 

EMAIL

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It’s a jellyfish, which is neither jelly nor fish, but common names are often like that. It’s actually a colony living together to make a shape. My dad warned against these orangey ones. They sting, even “dead” on the sand like this one.

I received a bulk email from a neighbor. He neglected to use the blind feature (Bcc) so better than three dozen people who apparently do not know one another except through him now have one another’s emails. (I should tell him my story about the Bonsai Kittens—a hoax my then-adolescent niece believed and sent out to well over a hundred people, outing their email addresses at a time people were particularly sensitive to junk email.) The original email promotes Biden as the best bet to defeat Trump. We do not all seem to be on board with that. I have disliked the man for decades and nothing he’s done recently restores any faith in his capacity for making wise choices or any vision.

A Canadian weighed in warning about the radical left. I wish he had been this Canadian:

My 91 year old father in law has been diagnosed as having a terminal illness.  He has lost the use of his legs and has a large cancerous mass in his lungs which cannot be treated due to his advanced age and fragile health.  We are having a lift installed to transfer him from bed to chair and back again.  He will receive 4 times a day care from nurses and aides and housekeeping services for him and my mother in law.  There are no charges for this, NOTHING, no deductibles, no co-pays, and no limit.  There will be no charges for his 3 weeks of hospitalisation either.  Sounds good?  Well, this is Canada, and this is how we treat people.  No one dies from lack of health care at any age, and no one ever goes bankrupt from medical expenses.  We all pay, and we all receive.

This person wrote in response to an article in The Washington Post about the murder-suicide of the elderly couple in Washington State. They explained they were overwhelmed by medical bills. Someone assured readers that they should have planned better in order to have better insurance.

It does not seem like a radical notion to provide health care for people in the richest nation on earth. I will also say that I had a medical emergency in Canada a long time ago. I was in terrible pain and a doctor came in to his office on his day off, took good care of me, and did not charge me a dime. Maybe he was just a nice guy. What a concept.

Before we go dismissing the “far left” for their crazy-impractical-radical notions, we might consider that most of, no, nearly all of the first world is already doing those things. Reducing greenhouse gases, cutting out unnecessary use of plastics, preserving parks and forests, healthcare for everyone, affordable public education right through college, better maternal and infant care, a rising life expectancy—we actually can afford it all and most of the world (well, not third world countries) does.

We are a rich country, but many poor countries take better care of their ill and elderly, care better for the environment, and have lower taxes. It’s amazing what a nation can afford when it does not spend more than the next ten wealthiest countries combined on military spending. Military bases in hundreds of foreign countries (would we pursue or even allow this in the United States?) cost enough to pay for the best medical care in the world for everyone, not merely the wealthy. New paint job for the President’s jets or healthcare? Do I have to choose?

more . . .

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What Toni Morrison wrote just after the 2016 election. She saw what was coming.

So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters—both the poorly educated and the well educated—embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.

I have to remind myself that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote.

The great tennis champion Arthur Ashe spoke long ago about being the first black tennis star. He warned that he was easy to accept—modest in appearance, “well-spoken,” and polite. He was acceptable as the token black man. There would be players in the future, he said, who would not fit so comfortably into the elite white world of professional talent. Yes, he saw the Williams sisters coming. It was not okay but accepted as inevitable that a few white players misbehaved. There was plenty of rudeness and poor sportsmanship among white (male) players long before Ashe’s gentle persona made an appearance and reminded people that tennis was a gentlemanly sport. But a few years later Serena raises her voice and suddenly the white world has hysterics.

Sometimes you need one foot outside the lines to see a bad call. Or to make a good one.