CHICAGO LAKESHORE 1: How Ann Sterzinger & Jamie Mason Founded Camus-TV

Much as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson conspired to create Brexit without any real plan for how to deal with victory, so did Ann Sterzinger and I pitch a pilot to a Hollywood director, that convinced us to found a Kickstarter without ever really expecting people to respond. And oh my God, did they respond …

And so without further ado, the history of CHICAGO LAKESHORE.

1. MY BEST FRIEND

This is Ann Sterzinger. Ann is an alien being inhabiting Chicago who subsists on a diet of caffeine, French literature and raw sarcasm. So far as I have been able to determine, Ann hates just about everybody.

Ann Sterzinger fucking hates you

She hates me a little less than most others and so we’re BFFs (best frenemies forever).

2. GOALS

Ann and I are both writers. We’re old school devotees of the late 19th century schools of European literature. While most kids grew up wanting to be Jim Morrison, we wanted to be Balzac.

Balzac, hung over

Because we were serious literary prodigies, we both went to college. We got degrees. We worked shit jobs for decades and devoted ourselves to our craft. Then ECLIPSE became a best-seller. Since then, we spend a lot of time talking about becoming mercenaries in fucking Syria or something whilst swinging wildly between despair, alcoholism and suicidal ideation.

3. FATE!

We met on Facebook. I imagined Ann as an overweight chain-smoking woman in her seventies who wore mumus. She knew I was Canadian. That was enough for us to develop a healthy mutual suspicion of one another.

We started writing together. Oh sure, we could have had phone sex or indulged in some form of primitive long-distance cyber-romance but we’re both broke writers so rather than waste time on that bullshit, we started beta-reading each others’ stuff and then, later, collaborating. Our phone calls occasionally strayed into common territory. And we discovered …

4. NUTS

We both had first-hand experience of the mental health system, myself as a guard and Ann as a patient. We began comparing notes and discovered that our experiences weren’t very different. In fact, they were eerily fucking similar.

5. CHICAGO LAKESHORE

Let’s be honest. The world is sinking into for-profit, corporate-driven mass psychosis. Ann and I have decided it’s time for a television show that reflects this emerging reality.

Welcome to the psychiatric-industrial police state. Welcome to Chicago Lakeshore.

Alfred’s Way

I spent a lot of time with my grandparents as a kid. My mother’s father raised a family of five during the Great Depression by working as a door-to-door salesman – Fuller Brushes mostly, but they say Alfred could sell anything. Perhaps it was this experience of traveling far and wide and meeting so many different people that gave Alfred his unique perspective. Like most men in our family, Alfred was pretty circumspect. At family gatherings you wouldn’t even know he was in the room. But he could surprise you. Alfred was very firm in his belief about certain things. Like how you should treat people.

Montreal in the 1920s and 30s was a multicultural stew, particularly in the neighborhood where my mother grew up. Immigrants were pouring in – mostly Italians and Eastern Europeans. Newcomers to Canada who choose Quebec get a double dose of xenophobia – first, the generic white people kind, then the specialized and excruciating French form. Alfred would have none of it.

“Never make fun of a man who’s willing to work,” he would say. “You ask a Frenchman or an Englishman to dig a ditch and he’ll say it’s below him. But give the job to an Italian or a Polish man and he’ll dig the best ditch you’ve ever seen and be glad for the opportunity.”

Having been an immigrant myself, I understand the difficulty of trying to fit in where you’re not welcome. On some level, Grandpa did, too, rejecting the heraldry of even the most obvious differences of religion or appearance.

“They’re not n*****s They’re Negroes.” He was firm on this. “That’s the respectful way to refer to those folks. They’re no different from us.”

An antique term by today’s standards – and an objectionable one to some of my African-American friends – but Alfred’s heart was in the right place. He was trying, in his way, to manifest a primitive form of political correctness. He believed that it was up to individuals to take responsibility for making a fairer and more just world and that task begins with each of us.

I’m surprised by some of the attitudes I’m encountering with regards to the Syrian refugees in our midst. Both in live conversations and on-line, I have encountered opinions ranging from reluctant to resistive to downright hostile. Relatively few folks are accepting, and there seems to be real objections to the notion of extending a hand of welcome. Here on Vancouver Island, home to one of the most inhospitable demographics in North America, Middle Easterners will encounter a double dose, like the Italians of yore. This will play out in the dynamic of locals and newcomers interacting and finding – or not finding – a way to get along. Hopefully people will overcome their fear of the unknown and manifest some of the kindness and generosity for which Canadians are – justly, or unjustly – renowned. We will see.

As for me and my house, we will follow Alfred’s way.

 

Four Eloquent Silences

1.

Night landing: a hard bump and I’m awake, head vibrating with the shudder as the Otter throttles down and touches tarmac. A small airport – one not even large enough to warrant a passenger lounge. My friend’s car is parked in the shadow of a steel shed housing the automated beacon.

“I’ve tried very hard to keep my name off the ‘net.” He smiles apologetically as he stows my luggage in the backseat. “Search for me on Google and you find a guy who runs a grocery store in Minnesota. Nothing about me or my military service.”

“I get it.” I, too, have been living a hard-target lifestyle since the Cold War ended. We have a lot in common although wildly divergant life-paths have led us to roughly the same place thirty years after we graduated high-school together. And so I understand why he drives quickly with the lights dimmed, why he keeps a loaded Browning in the glove box and a drink pre-poured in the fridge which he gulps immediately upon arrival home.

“You were asking about the rape camps.” He leans back against the kitchen counter as I fish out a joint and light up. “Yes, I believe there were rape camps. Sure there were rumors but from everything I saw, yeah. I believe them.”

“So how do you square it with what’s going on in Europe now?”

“I read your piece in that Alt Right webzine. Right On, wasn’t it? Your readers won’t like that, Jamie.”

“My only obligation to my readers is to entertain them.”

“When did you become such a hard-ass?”

“When did you become such an alcoholic?”

“After Rwanda. Which I don’t discuss anymore for mental health reasons.” He slides open the glass door to the porch, steps across and fires up the gas grill. “Bosnia was bad enough. I couldn’t barbecue for a decade.”

I shudder, remembering the letter when it arrived, the cryptic return address of coded letters and numbers signifying his combat rotation. And, inside, scrawled in his spidery handwriting, the description of the charred bodies of children in the ditches lining either side of the highway to Sarajevo.

“The Muslims were the victims.” I take a seat in a worn and slightly moist lawn chair. “The Serbians tried to ethnically cleanse them out of existence. Rape was part of that program.”

“I heard about that movie – the one that famous Hollywood actress made. What’s her name? Brangelina something? Didn’t do too well. Still. Good for her. Most people don’t want to hear that shit.” He loses focus as he stares into the glowing charcoals. “In Villages like Bacovici and Fojnica, these areas where on the line between HVO – Croat Forces – and BIH, Bosnian Muslim troops. As the line moved back and forth, houses and businesses were deliberately targeted. In some areas, houses of fleeing families were deliberately burned to the ground.”

“A neat trick. When they weren’t shelling the marketplace.”

“War is hell.” He pulls the foil back from two prime steaks, liberally seasoned, and forks them onto the grill. “February of 1994. There was no legitimate military target in the area. Resulted in the creation of the TEZ, the total exclusion zone, a 20 km circle around the area. Weapons and artillery became legitimate targets for the UN and NATO. US and British air strikes followed soon after.”

“Did you know that human rights violations might be happening?”

“Yes. It was part of our training.”

“And what were you supposed to …? I mean what steps could you ..?”

“Our rules of engagement remain classified.” He is frowning now, staring off into space. “But they were, uh, mostly defensive. There was nothing, really. Nothing. We could …”

He turns and heads back indoors to freshen his drink.

2.

I am re-reading the e-mail in disbelief. The editor is demanding historical citations to the war crimes committed in Bosnia. My collaborator and I are good friends but not above the occasional acidic spat. We fire insults pretty liberally even when we’re getting along, but things get heated pretty quickly this time.

The woman is an idiot, I claim. To which she ripostes: nice attitude to have toward our editor. I tell her about my friend, about the carefully-handwritten letters detailing the events as he witnessed them, about the international outcry, the UN tribunals. She remains firm. Sources, footnotes, proof. I dutifully supply same.

The article is published. Rumors of Bosnian war crimes are mentioned. As if that’s all they ever were.

3.

Rain hammers down as I stumble across the uneven ground toward the farm-house. My feet, boots and pants are soaked by the time she lets me in.

“So what was it you wanted to talk about?” My ex-wife Becky picks up a spoon and begins stirring the cous-cous. The house is more or less unchanged since I vacated three years ago. The spaces I once filled are now crammed with more clutter: bags of wool, the scale and shrink-wrap sealer used during strawberry harvest, the green cardboard flats for produce. And, hanging on the wall beside the wool-carder, a framed portrait of the Berber tribeswoman woman who was Becky’s surrogate mother to her during her difficult years in Tunisia.

“When I was talking about the sexual assaults on Cologne New Years Eve you interrupted and said that, yeah, because you’d been in North Africa, you can imagine what might have happened. Could you expand on that? What do you mean?”

“Well.” She puts down the spoon and stares at the counter-top. “The culture in North Africa is sexually very restricted. No interaction between young men and women is permitted. Any woman who is unaccompanied as she walks around outdoors is considered a ‘sharmuta’, which is Arabic for ‘whore’.”

“Do they have whores in their culture? Prostitutes?”

“Oh god yes. And they do a brisk business. But they’re very careful. Like sex-workers everywhere, they endure a great deal of violence. But we were warned, as idealistic young Peace Corps volunteers, that any woman who walks unaccompanied on the streets can expect to be pinched, grabbed at … It’s just the culture. So you can imagine being some young North African guy turned loose in Europe …”

“It would be like a sexual Disneyland.” I shake my head and continue typing notes into my Android. “It seems there has been a deliberate attempt to downplay the event. Some feminists have been protesting with signs that say ‘I PREFER A RAPIST TO A RACIST’.”

“That’s insane.” Becky stops stirring. “But then again I can understand a victim of rape or harassment choosing not to report a crime because …”

My voice suddenly weakens. “Because … why?”

Becky is looking at me funny. “Sometimes people don’t want to bring public shame down on themselves. Or their family. Jamie, is there -?”

“So how about this? There’s evidence that a series of similar attacks happened elsewhere that same night. Stuttgart, Berlin, Zurich …”

“Not conspiracy bullshit?”

“No, this is from police blotters. Also in Malmo, Sweden. A music festival last fall. A whole whack of sexual assaults got reported but, like in Germany, the police, politicans and the press suppressed reporting of it.”

“Well, I can see why!” Becky picks up her spoon and pokes at the cous-cous again. “Any uproar could imperil the continued influx of immigrants. Which is supposed to provide Europe with a source of cheap labor for decades to come!”

I smile. After all, she had once worked for the State Department.

4.

It is 1990. I am twenty-four years old. It is Friday evening and an older co-worker has invited me to meet him for drinks at an abandoned park a few miles from the office. I am just awakening from the sudden shock of being thrust into the workforce following the financial ruin of my parents. After two years of working 70 hours per week for minimum wage to pay my bills, I am loosening up so I now only work 50 hours per week and manage to enjoy the occasional cocktail hour.

Barry is waiting for me in the ruined playground of the abandoned housing project. Half-built model homes loom all around us and the desolate little patch of greenery with its concrete picnic tables, swings and jungle gym is a sad reminder of the cheery little neighborhood envisaged by the urban planners.

“You’ve been very cool to me, Jamie, since I came on board and I want you to know I really appreciate it.” Barry reaches into a bag by his feet, produces a beer can and offers it. I shake my head. He opens it and continues. “I’m surprised you didn’t apply for the manufacturing manager’s job yourself. You could have had it.”

“Not interested. Mind if I?” I fish a joint from my sock and hold it up.

“Grass, eh? Huh. Go ahead.” Barry slurps beer. “I figured you were kind of a bad boy, Jamie. Verity said you were good friends. I asked her about that conversation you two were having last week. About how you ..?”

“How I what?” I light up. Verity and I discuss a lot of things. We’re kindred Gen-X’ers with displaced expectations and an increasingly bleak economic outlook. It just seems to us that the Boomers had raided and run with all the good stuff long before we arrived, leaving us to work Walmart wages for middle management jobs. But we strive to have a good attitude about it. Given that my dad had gone to jail for being a con, I get hip to the whole game fast.

“How you’re … bisexual.”

I fiddle with my joint. Blink. Pretend not to be too interested. “What about it?” I ask boredly.

“I got into trouble for being bisexual when I was in the Army. That’s why I transferred out and re-enlisted into the Navy.” He is watching me carefully now. “I told my wife and she just started to laugh. How would she possibly understand? Anyway. Yeah. I’ve been kind of lonely about it. And then I overheard you and Verity and -”

“Well, hey. I’m flattered, man. But -”

“And I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since. Like I watch you walk through the office with your shirt and tie. And your nipples poking out against your shirt front. And I can’t help myself.”

“Ah -”

“I just spend a lot of time imagining how I would eat your ass. You know? How I would just dive into it like a watermelon half. And mmm – good.”

Barry keeps this up for the next hour. Then the next week. After a month, I find a reason to resign by mail, and receive an angry voice message from the owner of the company demanding to know why.

I don’t answer.

Tuareg tribesman.

 

BOOMTOWN

In the fly-blown desert strip-mall that was Reagan’s America, authenticity was hard to come by, particularly in music. After a Me-decade spent hashing out new technologies, market jurisdictions and FCC red tape, the unweildy goose known as the “entertainment industry” had landed. Media moguls invoked focus-group wisdom to foist “edgy” punk acts and big hair metal bands on the public while conspiring to craft the ever-elusive mega-hit. 1984 was the year Columbia Records dumped half its advertising budget into a single album, yielding BORN IN THE USA’s record round of hits and a windfall for shareholders. No one could be happier. But amid the ticker-tape and champagne, a few of us felt like something had been lost. The era of the contemplative songwriter with the journalistic focus and eye for small-time detail had been drowned out in the goldrush.

Enter BOOMTOWN, the stripped-down, guitar-driven album from David & David, a rock duo that appeared from out of nowhere with a catalogue of songs perfect for what ailed the era. Arranged with raw beauty and featuring rich lyrics growled with a kind of fuck-you insolence, “Welcome to the Boomton” proved a signature hit. Like the other songs, “Boomtown” was a starkly-drawn portrait of an LA underbelly populated by losers – the road-kill of the very media moguls bestriding the landscape: a mean old man washing his hands in the bathroom of the Firefly lounge, a former footballer dealing dope out of Denny’s, a coked-out rich girl gunning her 944 down a dark road toward her destiny and a puzzled guy on the cusp of middle age looking back and wondering how his old friends got swallowed by the cracks. No focus group could have given us the rich cast and dark pathos of BOOMTOWN. Baerwald and Ricketts had succeeded, in an era of shallow pretense, in creating a masterpiece.

There was no follow-up. Pressures internal and external conspired to derail any sequel to this promising debut. Singly and together, both men would go on to pursue other interests, contributing music to film projects or furnishing material or chops on other peoples’ records. Toni Childs and Sheryl Crowe were two who benefitted from cross-pollination with the Baerwald/Ricketts magic, as did their listeners. MOULIN ROUGE, LEAVING LAS VEGAS and a host of other films would be powered by the sound. But an opportunity to reform and release new music would elude David & David until 2016. Now on the brink of releasing BOOMTOWN’s sequel, Baerwald and Ricketts are turning to the public with the simple question: do you want more?

We have come a long way from the hair bands and media moguls of the 1980s. Those of us who care about songs with killer lyrics and great musicianship now have a chance to show those focus-groups just where we’d like the damn money spent. Backers are promising to bankroll another album if the boys get the support. Consider this short retrospective an appeal to David & David fans past and present to step up and support the band’s return by “liking” their Facebook page and getting as many friends as possible to do likewise. 6000 more likes and we’ve got ourselves BOOMTOWN 2.

Go on.

You know you want to.

After Bowie

It was Sunday morning around 1978 or so and everyone’s weekend was decomposing in the cigarette stink of other peoples’ basements. But Danny, still wearing mascara and glitter, wandered, not quite ready for square Monday morning although it crouched in curtained windows and closed shop doors, lurked at each sterile street corner. Guarding the status-quiet like a dull-eyed concrete dog, Sunday was Cerberus of Normal’s return.

Danny knew what it was to be disappointed by your own ugliness, and just how destructive it was to disbelieve in your own beauty. But the brutal sameness of street after street – that irresistible conformity was the gravity well toward which each weekend plunged. Its inevitability demanded doubt in one’s self, just as its return proclaimed the rule of sameness: sack lunches and school haircuts and JV sports, station-wagons and Sunday afternoon barbecues and especially the message : no weirdoes allowed.

But during the week there was always a chance you’d overhear a snatch of boogie on a passing transistor radio or see, on Sunday morning, a closed record store window with a scrap of torn poster in one corner. There were always affirmations of the weird: subtle chimeras waiting to rise like night-blooms among the everyday. Such pop culture clues to our identity never lasted long before being painted over or torn down, which just made them all the more precious.

THE ROAD TO ASHES 1: MAKE-BELIEVE RAPE

Let’s talk about rape.

Not real rape. Real rape is a deadly serious issue and a topic on which I am vastly underqualified to speak. But there is another form of rape about which I am very qualified to speak, and that is ‘Make-Believe Rape’.

Some of you – mostly women – have already tuned out or stopped reading altogether. Because you think you know where there is going.

You don’t.

Make-believe rape exists, although it is politically incorrect to acknowledge that it does. This is because the politically correct handle big issues like rape by creating a catechism – a creed that they incant whenever certain Unacceptable Ideas appear (much as primitive people incant charms to ward off demons). Make-Believe Rape is such an idea. Because the catechism about rape, soft-peddled by the Socially Just (those Crusaders Against All that is Unsafe and Oppressive) is that rape victims are never believed. That rape is more prevalent than is statistically suggested and that victims of rape who come forward often face harassment, ridicule or worse.

All of which is true.

But it doesn’t cancel out the existence of Make-Believe Rape. And because Make-Believe Rape is one of those Unacceptable Ideas, greeted by incantations and banished with discourse, it has yet to be mined for outrage. It has yet to be scripturalized, catechised or moulded into PC dogma. So it therefore remains truly a frontier of free thought.

Make-Believe Rape is what happens when a woman tries to destroy a man by creating a story. It is a story so disturbing and uncomfortable that no one dares inquire too deeply into it. Instead they suggest, in hushed tones, that the “victim” seek help from the police or other professionals. They commiserate, offer support, take a dim view of the accused and never ever question whether or not the story is true (because that’s just WRONG). And so it is the perfect weapon for a woman out for revenge, use of which against a man – short of legal recourse – guarantees almost no repercussions.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman. But I would imagine that sort of unwritten code of comradeship exists among you all. It makes sense that, as an oppressed group, you would band together. Women appear to support and take care of each other – even strangers – in ways that men don’t. One woman can go to another (again, even a stranger) when threatened with violence or sexual assault with a pretty fair assurance her plea will be heard. And a woman who reports a rape can be assured of an instant support network.

Not so survivors of Make-Believe Rape.

Survivors of Make-Believe Rape are men who, for whatever reason, have been falsely accused of committing an act of sexual violence against a woman. They cannot go to other men for comfort or support because males, by their very nature, crave female approval and so are often only too ready to ‘take the woman’s side’ in cases of gossip and scandal. (Comfort from women, of course, is also completely out of the question.) Furthermore, there is a tendency on the part of both sexes to assume that anyone accused of rape is, if not guilty, probably at least partially responsible for bringing the accusation upon himself by some behavior or other. And so suspicion of the accused deepens to the point at which they become isolated and, occasionally, even ostracized.

We ought to be having a cultural discussion about Make-Believe Rape. Not because I think it is a particularly widespread phenomenon but simply because it exists. And because it is an Unacceptable Idea to discuss. The very notion of Unacceptable Ideas must be challenged at every turn. Failure to do so has led to the very public lynchings of certain celebrities. Some have truly been rapists. But not all. And so the question becomes – how do we talk about victims of Make-Believe Rape?

Don’t, whisper the Social Justice Warriors. Because it doesn’t happen often enough to matter.

To which I say: fuck you, Social Justice Warriors.

It happened to me once. And once was enough.

 

Coverage

Just received rejection notices on two pieces of short fiction. While I’m pleased with both stories, I realize the markets were not a fit and so I’m setting the manuscripts aside for later consideration. I have been asked why I continue writing and submitting short stories when I have a multi-book contract with a publisher. Well, one thing I like about writing is how every author, no matter how famous, undergoes some variation of the submission cycle and copes with periodic rejection. It keeps us all humble and serves as a reminder to me of the importance of continuing to develop my craft. Periodicals and publishers may come and go, but the writer remains. It’s up to each one of us to maintain a certain level of relevance and visibility.

I often find writers blogging or Facebooking about current events, inserting their bon mot. This is well and good, and probably a smart move as regards maintaining career visibility and remaining relevant, but I’m not built that way. I should probably blog more, but I’m reluctant to post unless I have something substantive to say. I tend to admire writers like Salinger and Trevanian, recluses who spoke to the public only through their work. Both operated in the typewriter age – one to which I would gladly return. The pace of correspondence on social media can be exhausting, and drains time and energy from a writer. This is something for which I am developing adaptive strategies.

It occurs to me that we live in an age of manufactured culture, of celebrity for its own sake. There is something very hollow about an artistic environment in which someone can become famous by association, wherein big film studios prefer funding high-concept remakes of known quantities and where “hit” albums are manufactured by committee. I’m often hard-pressed to find substance among this glut of American Idol music releases, big-budget superhero movies and eye-catching paperbacks churned out as part of the wholesale entertainment machine. Yes, fame and success are wonderful things, but art that achieves resonance from being rooted in personal experience is far preferable to me than something dredged from the mass media slush. So while I wish the Chef Ramseys and Justin Trudeaus and Ronda Rouseys of the world luck with their latest ghost-written tomes, I’ll happily file away my rejection e-mails and get back to work trying to write something that will hit people where they live. Because that’s my job. Not being famous.

Garland

Interpretations of radical Muslim terror attacks tend to fall into two camps. One is dismissive of the deeper political resonance of such events, tending to frame them as “lone gunman”-style incidents while the other camp holds a very rigid (and, one could say, un-nuanced) understanding of the international dimensions of Islamic extremism. As happens when views about important subjects polarize, each side becomes identified with a particular political discourse.

The blood is barely dry on the pavement of Garland and already a social media war has erupted over interpretation of the incident. When New York Times foreign correspondent Mukrini Callimachi tweeted a characterization of the shooting in Garland as an attack on an anti-Muslim event, right-wing novelist Brad Thor fired back in a predictably acrimonious fashion and a flame war ensued wherein we saw two sides writ large: one attacking the other for offering what amounts to an apologia for abridging free speech.

“Free speech” is now used as a pejorative term by some on the left who conflate supporting this ideal with intolerant attitudes toward Muslims. The recent PEN dust-up wherein six writers declined the role of table hosts for the forthcoming PEN gala honoring Charlie Hebdo is one example. The writers withdrew, claiming an anti-Muslim bias on the part of CH. In fact, the honor had less to do with the magazine’s politics (which, believe me, are more akin to Alfred E. Newman than David Duke) and more to do with celebrating its perseverance in the face of terror. Yet these writers emphasized a PC interpretation of the proposed award (i.e., “how Muslims might see it”). It was a political gesture, intended to highlight the divide separating these two contrasting takes on the present cultural tension between freedom of speech and radical Islam.

Not only contrasting, but also irreconcilable. We either have free speech in our culture, or we do not. We cannot abridge or water-down or temper a political principle. We can temper our behavior, our own reaction to things that offend us. But when we water down a political principle, we deprive the individual exercise of his own rights – and of his own right to judge.

Put another way – you have the personal choice whether or not to offend Muslims by drawing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, but you do not have the right to make that choice for me or anyone else. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of free expression.

There is an emerging sense in our culture that if we just refrained from expressing certain ideas, drawing certain cartoons, saying certain things, then perhaps we wouldn’t have to cope with lethal terror attacks. It amounts to a softening of the line on free expression, a courting of censorship, a willingness to deal away portions of that freedom in exchange for a kind of fuzzy détente (“we don’t draw cartoons of Mohammed and you won’t try and kill us, ‘kay?”). This sounds reasonable to some on the Left. It also sounds good to British jihadi apologist Anjem Choudary.

It’s comforting to know that Choudary’s Sixth Century world-view does not preclude his using Twitter, where all of us (including, presumably, members of Special Branch) can keep an eye on him. A quick glance at his Tweets gives you the totality of the man’s views, and they are as tedious as they are clear. Choudary stands ready, hand extended, to seal the deal. Do what he wants – temper your political principles and artistic culture to suit his beliefs – and you can take the jihadi-approved first steps toward peace with the disciples of his god.

It’s your move.

Regarding the Queen

Visitors to my home are often surprised to see a portrait of the Queen and Prince Phillip prominently displayed. I grew up with grandparents and older relatives who observed the tradition of keeping the Queen’s picture in the house and I suppose it rubbed off on me. Given my politics and social values, people are puzzled by my attachment to the Royals. It’s worth explaining.

In elementary school, we began each day singing “God Save the Queen”. I was taught to stand and come to attention whenever that anthem plays (I still do), and the excitement I feel seeing the Queen on television is probably an outgrowth of that. Conditioned as a young person to respect Her Majesty, I feel a certain comfort just knowing she is there, maintaining the institution of the monarchy and, with it, many of the pillars of British culture. We live in a time when it is not fashionable to revere tradition – I get that. But for those of us who see its value, the Queen is its symbol, embodied – stubborn and unyielding, persevering despite changes in culture, standing for a set of values that transcend Self. The Queen, herself a servant of tradition, for me is a reminder of the importance of service and self-sacrifice. And for that example, I thank her.

Every monarch’s reign eventually ends. And on that day, the heir is summoned to the to the bedside, receives the royal ring and, with the first whispered “your majesty”, assumes all the burden of history and tradition. There is something very hopeful in that, and very human. It means that somebody is willing to devote their life to maintaining that connection to the past. It’s a good thing. It’s my culture and I’m proud to be a part of it.