Isn't it Past Time to Cancel The Nutcracker?

‘Tis the season to sit through another Nutcracker. Molly, our beautiful granddaughter, danced again as she has for several years, this year as a party guest, a snowflake, a flower, and so on. She is a lovely and graceful dancer; I love to watch her dance. She is also an awesomely powerful lacrosse mid-fielder with a wickedly accurate shot. I love to watch her play. But of the two, lacrosse is harmless and engrossing entertainment. The Nutcracker not so subtly, not so.

Don't misunderstand. Tchaikovsky's music is glorious; the costumes and sets in a good production are beautiful and evocative; the dancing, entrancing. It's the content I and many object to, and should be cancelled.  

It is disconcerting to hear myself talk of cancellation – I who believe proscription of speech is wrong and speech should only be judged appropriate or inappropriate after it has been delivered. But if found inappropriate many times year after year and in many places, is it not then OK to cancel it?

About The Nutcracker, of which Tchaikovsky said “ . . . in spite of all the sumptuousness it did turn out to be rather boring:” it is not merely boring but also unforgivably racist. The Chinese tea dance has attracted opprobrium for years, with New York, San Francisco, London, PNB and scores of other companies hoping that by revising it they’d minimize racist overtones and avoid offending Asians (Feministi, 2010; Dance magazine, 2013; New York Times, 2019, 2021, and lots more.)

But that’s not all; there’s the sexy Arabian Coffee number with stereotypical harem-pantalooned temptress; the good girl/bad boy stereotype; the violence; and I’m sure animal rights folks are lurking. And over it all the Freudian acting-out of adolescent dreams of heroic, macho princes rescuing virginal maidens.

Boredom, racism, ethnic and gender stereotypes, chauvinism, violence, and sexual repression – what’s not to dislike? OK, some of you will accuse me of being excessively woke. But explain away bored.

It is time to relegate to the music library this 19^thC pean to Czar Nicholas’s empire – for Tchaikovsky’s music is beloved – and anoint some new Christmas tale to render in dance.

A ballet ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, anyone? 

Hamas Has Won the War

Who wins a war? Those who kill the most people? Or those who achieve their political aims?

Hamas, not Palestine and not Israel, has already won this war at a fearsome cost of thousands of their constituents' lives, horrific displacement of millions of their hostage/constituent Gazans, and a senseless massacre of 1200-some Israelis. 

Israel can kill Palestinians and shoot down Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthi rockets but can never kill the extremists' dreams of ridding the world of Jews. In the meantime, Hamas' war has 

• restored Palestine to Arab center stage; 
• disrupted the inevitable process of reconciling the Arab street to the existence of neighbor Israel; 
• resuscitated the nearly dead two-state necessity; 
• forced the world to look with opprobrium upon illegal settlements of occupied West Bank land; 
• dealt, perhaps, a death-blow to the political life of Binyamin Netanyahu; 
• strengthened the hand of progressive, liberal Israelis; 
• and -- most important -- weakened America's unquestioning resolve to support Israel.    

Big wins -- at horrific cost -- but big wins for Hamas.  

Values

On a Zoom discussion Thursday, one break-out group got onto discussing values – what, the question was, are truly your values? The group agreed that reflecting on and assessing one’s core values was a difficult and valuable regimen.

In follow-up to my catalog of my beliefs, developed in the same reflective and difficult process (Northwest Ruminations: Sept 11^th, below) here are what I regard as my values:

The Rghts to be Respected and to be Heard: everyone has value and deserves to be understood.

·          Facts, History and Science: information and perspective are necessary to dealing with the world.

·          Pragmatism: what works trumps ideology and theory.

W     Equity, Justice, and Fairness         

        Life: living beings are connected in a web of force, the origin of which is unknowable. Best bet: treat sensate beings as sacred.

·           Skepticism: a grain of salt is a required ingredient for effective citizenship.

·           Community: better to go slow by consensus and collaboration than fast alone; I’ll go further in the end.     

·           Accountability, i.e., accepting and acknowledging responsibility for one’s (my) acts.

·           Humility: nobody likes a know-it-all – and you don’t know it all.

·           Loving: healthier than hating – for everyone.

·           Empathy, the glue holding community together.

·           Compassion and Forgiveness.

·           Foresight.

F      Freedom, to be exercised and granted to others.

 

A Postscript to Elephants in the Room (re Nuclearization of the World's Hot Spots)

I just posted letters (real ones, with envelopes and stamps and addresses and all) to my Congressman Adam Smith and Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell in follow-up to my post about nuclear dangers.

Here is the text sent to each of them:

I recently posted on my blog a piece about the danger of potential nuclearization of hot spots in the world (The Elephants in the Room, at Northwest Ruminations.) I said there “. . . world leaders are acting as if they do not see these elephants, but they must. I cannot believe they do not. But what are they doing?”

The latest kindling being laid is Putin’s revocation of Russian Federation ratification of the test ban treaty. I see that Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Arms Control Association have raised the alarm. We need more voices doing so.

What we really need is a Nuclear Greta Thunberg to alarm, arouse and energize young people around the world to this second source of existential danger. And your voice and presence can help find her or him and encourage them.

Please weigh in publicly on nuclear risk – in Kashmir, in Zaporizhzhia, in Dimona and Natanz, in Pyongyang and Seoul, and now in possible resumption of testing by Russia, North Korea, China and who knows whom else. Please, make sure US testing does not resume. And please help ignite the youth of Washington and the US to rally and raise their voices about these elephants in the rooms.

Sincerely

Consider doing the same, please. Copy this if you want; no pride of authorship here. We need more voices about this existential threat, arguably one more immediately deadly than the progression of global warming. Whether you view nuclear arms exchange as #1 or #2 threat of extinction doesn't matter; we must address both. Send a letter or an e-mail to your Congressional representatives, please. Arise. 

They're Back

 I've sent something like this before, but they're back:

  

  

Yellow-orange leaves

blanket silent roots dreaming

of green springs to come.

The Elephants in the Room -- Three Rooms

There are four elephants in three rooms that the world pretends not to see. I'm not sure what your and my voices might mean, but I urge you to raise yours -- to your editors, your Congress-person, your Senators. I will if you will.

Two elephants hang out in Kashmir. India and Pakistan are increasingly hostile and irrational, each whipping up religious intolerance against the dangerous "other" to marshal patriotic and nationalistic support for their regimes. Both India and Pakistan are armed with nuclear warheads mounted on long-range ballistic missiles. The one is infested with terrorists; the other with fascist intolerance.

Another elephant lurks in an Ukranian room. Russian troops have taken the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. According to the IAEA they are running it sloppily, holding Ukrainian operators at their stations under the barrel of a gun, working them understaffed and overtime. The cooling water reservoir has been drained, the power supply jury-rigged. Were cooling to be disabled, Europe and the world might face a catastrophic nuclear melt-down exponentially worse than Chernobyl's.

The fourth elephant is in an Israeli room. Israel is the only mid-east nuclear power; they reputedly have an inventory of warheads that sit on long-range missiles, smaller tactical warheads in air-delivered bombs, and nuclear artillery shells. Their center is Dimona, in the Negev, just 30 km south-east of Be'er Sheva and even closer to the Jordan/West Bank border within easy reach of Iranian, Lebanese, Jordanian, Saudi, or Yemeni rockets. And given the rage Israelis are in, . . .? 

The world leaders are acting as if they do not see these elephants, but they must. I cannot believe they do not. But what are they doing??? 

That's what I have written about, to my two Senators and to Adam Smith, my Congressional Representative and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. Call out these elephants, demand action -- at least, talk about them. How is the world to tie them down? Who can tranquilize them? Alarms need to be rung -- perhaps our voices can set them off. 

Have you ever written your Senator or Representative? As we used to say at Kenner: It's easy, it's fun! Go on the web; give it a try. You might be surprised. Enough small voices can add up to a thunder that cannot be ignored. (Just ask Seahawks' opponents playing here in Seattle.) Let's get started.

September 24th

The rains have arrived.

Again, summer ends. Red and

yellow leaves delight.

 

Seahawks, Dawgs, Cougars,

cozy woolens re-appear.

Sol flees south once more.

 

Curled by the fire, those 

melancholic blues: these mark

true Seattleites.

 

I'm told Old Sol will be gone in 250 million years; I expect I will be too.