A Q&A with Sharon daVanport

Sharon daVanport. Cover art: Louis Roe

Most resources available for parents come from psychologists, educators, and doctors, offering parents a narrow and technical approach to autism. Sincerely, Your Autistic Child, edited by Emily Paige Ballou, Sharon daVanport, and Morénike Giwa Onaiwu, represents an authentic resource for parents written by autistic people themselves. From childhood and education to culture, gender identity, and sexuality, this anthology tackles the everyday joys and challenges of growing up while honestly addressing the emotional needs, sensitivity, and vibrancy of autistic kids, youth, and young adults.

In this blog series, our editorial intern, Evangelyn Beltran, introduces you to each of the editors to talk about the book and about how parents can avoid common mistakes and misconceptions, and make their child feel truly accepted, valued, and celebrated for who they are. Next up this Autism Acceptance Month is Sharon daVanport!

Evangelyn Beltran: Tell me about your experience founding Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network (AWN).

Sharon daVanport: AWN finds our history deeply rooted in the need to find community and shared-lived experiences.

At the time AWN entered the autism community, the narrative centered mostly around young white boys and men. In those early days, we discovered quickly that AWN was an initiative that was desperately needed.

AWN also recognized early on the importance of engaging researchers in order to address the underrepresentation of all marginalized genders within autism research. Autism studies have been historically dominated by young school-aged boys, and it became obvious to AWN’s founders how disproportionately distorted the autism diagnostic criteria is due to gender and racial bias.

It was also during those early days when parents to autistic children held the microphone, and too often they didn’t see the benefit of sharing the conversation with autistic people; and as difficult as those formative years were on our community, it was those very same experiences which encouraged us to keep moving forward with purpose.

Today, we find a much different autism community where Autistic adults are loudly and proudly holding the microphone, and the majority of parents are more cognizant of the benefits of Autistic adults being front and center while leading the conversation as the experts in our own lives.

Of course, like most organizations, there are many layers to our history as well as the many ways by which we have implemented our own needed changes in order to be equitably representative of our community members. You can read more about Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network’s history and progress over the years in Steven Kapp’s book, Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the Frontline.  

EB: When did you first start becoming involved in disability justice?

SD: My start in disability justice evolved gradually over time and after having been in the online autism community for several years. As AWN grew, we realized the importance of building relationships with cross disability coalitions and we made deliberate choices to engage other activists and organizations within the greater disability community. There’s always power and strength when those of us with like-minded goals join forces. I guess you can say that the rest is history.

EB: What are the biggest issues regarding disability justice in your view? 

SD: The disability community is not unlike all other communities which make up society as a whole. This means that we face the same disparities that all marginalized people face. These include, to name a few: racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, and oppression against all marginalized genders. More often than not, when these subjugations are inflicted upon disabled people, there’s an extra layer for which our community is forced to fight against. Internalized ableism IS a thing and it’s a constant battle for most of us who have grown up in a world that tries to tell us we are not enough.

EB: What is it like being a parent to neurodiverse children, being neurodiverse yourself?

SD: This is always one of my favorite interview questions, because being a parent continues to be the most meaningful experience of my life. It is through observing my children’s diverse expressions of individuality that I have learned to accept my whole self without exception.

In our family, we have regularly contended with an array of competing access needs. Most of these are specific to communication and sensory sensitivities. And though we are never perfect, we somehow manage to come out the other side with a determination to keep loving and appreciating one another for being faithful and true to our individual selves.

EB: What advice would you give young autistic people who are interested in advocacy and want to get started?

SD: I’d say, first and foremost, be kind to yourself; and as cliché as it may sound, never have these words been truer as it applies to self-advocacy and activism.

Understand and accept that you will make mistakes. We are an ever-evolving community, and you can expect that the strategies which worked in the disability advocacy community fifteen years ago might not work to our community’s benefit now.

Be ready and willing to accept the mistakes you’ll make from time to time. Allow yourself to be called in (or even called out) when need be. Remember that it’s not the mistakes we make that count but rather our willingness to correct and commit to do better as we learn.

Don’t try to be perfect. In fact, it’s our human imperfections that give us the ability to be empathetic and understanding to our fellow disabled advocates. The universe is wise and continues to teach us lessons. Speak out when you’re able and take a seat when necessary, but never ever forget to be kind to yourself.

About Sharon daVanport

Sharon daVanport lives in the Midwest by way of their home state of Texas where they spent young adulthood writing short stories, poetry and serving as co-editor of their academic newspaper. After nearly a decade in social work, Sharon founded the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network (AWN). Appointed by their state’s board of education, Sharon served a full term on the SILC board of directors. Publications include co-authoring a paper in Sage Pub Autism Journal, a chapter in Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the Front Line, and pieces in Welcome to the Autistic Community, and Disability Visibility Project.

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Wow! It feels like spring is finally here. Last week was a flurry of activity in our yard, and I had the energy to do it! And it was warm and sunny! We had a timeline. On Tuesday, all day I was sifting the remains of the old compost pile, and putting it everywhere–in the new raised bed, on the hugelkultur mound, the asparagus beds, under many of the fruit trees, the old potato patch, and an area near the baby apple trees in which I hope to plant zucchini this year. We have had to sift the compost because roots had worked their way into the pile from the edges, including invasive bittersweet which we do not want to spread around the garden.

The goal was to completely empty the pile, because on Wednesday we were getting a new four cubic yards of composted manure from Wilshore farm. So I finished up Wednesday morning, and Wednesday afternoon we got our delivery. Then Margy and I were using shovels and rakes the rest of the day to slightly move that pile so it was all situated on top of old carpet, with at least a foot of clearance around the edges–so no more roots.

On Thursday morning, I finished up with what was on the edges, and spread the remains over the nearby grassy areas. On Thursday afternoon, Dan from Blue Ox Tree Service was coming to cut down three Norway maples along the fence between us and our neighbors. While we hate to cut down trees, we also have been trying to remove invasive plants, and Norway maples are invasive here. They grow like crazy and spread their seeds everywhere. Both Margy and I each had a moment with those trees earlier, to apologize for needing to cut them down, and thanking them for the shade they had given, and say goodbye. We let them know that their wood would stay in our yard to benefit the other trees in the garden.

It was amazing to watch Dan climb the trees and with a system of ropes and pulleys balance himself on the tree, and cut it from within. We really like Dan, who has delivered free wood chips to our yard many times in past years. He is very tuned into permaculture, and told us he has an arrangement to deliver wood chips to Cultivating Community gardens this summer. In fact, our whole intense timeline of last week was based on the fact that he was going to leave us a pile of wood chips from the trees, and once that pile was there, a truck couldn’t get through to deliver compost where we needed it to be.

So here are our wood chip and compost piles, all set up for soil enhancement and mulching for the season. The area along the fence has opened up to offer more morning sun to the orchard–you can see four somewhat scraggy spruce trees remaining, plus a skinny red maple and oak near the right which will have more room to grow.

Now, the growing season is fully begun. I was amazed that I was able to put in so many hours of outside work each of those days–I am thinking it has something to do with the surging energy of the earth in spring, the warmth of the sun, and also with drinking iced licorice tea while I was working–a great herbal energy booster. I am remembering how exhausted I felt last fall, how much work the garden was during the long summer, and yet, spring brings new excitement and new energy, even to me with my chronic illnesses that can get in the way. May it be that way for you too!

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These two poems are personal.  Sort of.  They were not written to or about me and the poets presumably are totally unaware of my existence on the planet.  But each provided an ah-ha moment of personal recognition for me as a person of advancing age in increasing decrepitude.

Sydney Lea is a poet, novelist, essayist, editor, and professor, and was the Poet Laureate of Vermont from 2011 to ‘15.  His most recent book is The Exquisite Triumph of Wormboy, a graphic mock-epic poemin collaboration with former Vermont Cartoonist Laureate James Kochalka—how utterly Vermont to have a Cartoonist Laureate.   His thirteenth collection of poetry, Here was published 2019.  He founded New England Review in 1977 and edited it till 1989. His work has appeared in literary journals and magazinesincluding The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, and Virginia Quarterly Review.  Lea has taught for the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program at Dartmouth College, and at Yale University, Wesleyan University, Vermont College, Middlebury College, Franklin University Switzerland, and the National Hungarian University.

Reckoning struck me first because it opens in the state of my birth under the vast starry sky of the West that was such a part of my childhood and then because it shifts to the lights of a big city—Gotham for him, the Windy City for me.  I have no son, but daughters, I hear their voices—the bored indifference to those same Montana mountains and eagerness to find a mall—any mall—in the small towns among the pine smells.  The childrenof those two eldest daughters are grown now and one has a laughing toddler of his own.  My third and youngest lives with us now with her baby daughter.  I wonder if Matilda will walk by the hand with me to find the elf doorin a rotting tree in a remnant wood or a flop-eared rabbit in a cage.  I, too, feel some sort of transgenerational connection.

Reckoning

Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

         —Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader

Once, on the steps of a cabin in wild Montana,

just before dawn I stood stunned

by that delirium of stars.

I’ve looked from a friend’s apartment in New York

at nine o’clock in the evening,

likewise astounded by countless windows.

Light everywhere. Light everywhere. And dark.

Coleridge opined that the sublime

can make us feel like nothing.

I’m sure I’d have known as much without him.

The older I become the less I aim

at epic self-expression.

It’s best, I think, as I didn’t always,

to keep my counsel in face of sights and themes

that lie beyond my ken, right where they’ve lain

lifelong, though once ambition

obscured all that. But I check myself:

I’m no more nothing, in fact, than anybody.

My memory feels boundless,

and if it fetches no sublime,

still moments may be fashioned into stories.

As randomly as I might choose a star

or a single light from some high-rise,

I summon a time—or it summons me—

when I and my son, then just three years old,

walked through a patch of woods

to spy on a hidden beaver pond.

I longed for this adventure to unfold

exactly as it did. The wind came right,

and just enough of day

remained for both of us to see

three beavers swimming, a mere five feet from where

we crouched in pond-side reeds.

Clear as judgment in my mind,

the rasp of roost-bound crows, thick August air,

that tannic orange of the cruising rodents’ teeth.

My son appeared transported

as we left the place by early starlight.

“How was it?” asked his mother back at home.

“Oh, Mom! You should have seen!

There were some bugs in the water! They all were swimming!

All of them were swimming around and around!”

In my twenties then, I didn’t know

how not to feel let down.

I know some things today, that is,

that compensate for slackened aspiration.

That child is forty-seven,

his children much older than he was then.

I study my boy. I’m lost in speculation:

I resembled him, I hope, in intending kindness.

In my case, though, vague zeal

distracted my heart and mind and soul.

He’s taking his daughter to ski this afternoon.

They’ll command an epic view,

yet it may be only the shape of a mogul

or cloud that, come the evening, she’ll retain.

And my son? He has perhaps already traveled

like me to where all types of light are local.

— Sydney Lea

The next poem was shared just yesterday on Facebook by my best friend from high school, Jonathan Ben Gordon, now a retired Cantor. 

Camisha L. Jones is the author of the chapbook Flare published by Finishing Line Press in 2017. She received of a 2017 Spoken Word Immersion Fellowship from the Loft Literary Center.  She currently serves as the managing director at Split This Rock, a national nonprofit that cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change.  According to the Deaf Poets Society blog Jones “lives with fibromyalgia, Ménière's Disease, and an adamant commitment to keep her writing lifefrom scorching on the back burner.”  She lives in Herndon, Virginia.

At first glance it would seem that I would not have much in common with a young deaf Black poet.  Certainly I am not deaf but I am hard of hearing due to prolonged exposure to industrial noise and ear-bleeding rock and roll as a young man.  Before I finally got hearing aids I had plenty of those I’m-sorry-I-can’t-hear-you moments, especially when clerking overnight at a gas station/convenience store  to exasperated customers whose lottery and cigarette requests I could not quite make out.  Equally annoyedwas my wife who got tired of repeating herself over and over.  Things are mostly better now if I “have my ears in.”  But why the hell do they whisper on all of my favorite TV dramas?  And last week I must have said “huh?” a dozen times to my fellow activists at a Cancel the ICE Contract in McHenry County action.  And don’t get me started on garbled phone calls. 

Disclosure

I’m sorry, could you repeat that. I’m hard of hearing.

To the cashier

To the receptionist

To the insistent man asking directions on the street

I’m sorry, I’m hard of hearing. Could you repeat that?

At the business meeting

In the writing workshop

On the phone to make a doctor’s appointment

I’m-sorry-I’m-sorry-I’m-so-sorry-I’m-hard-for-the-hearing

Repeat.

           Repeat.

Hello, my name is Sorry

To full rooms of strangers

I’m hard to hear

I vomit apologies everywhere

They fly on bat wings

towards whatever sound beckons

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry

           and repeating

                       and not hearing

Dear (again)

I regret to inform you

I       am

here

—Camisha L. Jones

As Muslims around the world begin their holy month of Ramadan, many begin to think about the sacrifices they need to make in order to feel closer to Allah.

What might you sacrifice to feel closer to the sacred?

The Daily Compass offers words and images to inspire spiritual reflection and encourage the creation of a more loving, inclusive and just world. Produced by The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation with no geographical boundary. Please support the publishing of The Daily Compass by making a $10 or $25 contribution (more if you can, less if you can't)! Thank you for your support!

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When I look into that officer’s eyes, they’re not looking at me like I’m another human being. At best, I’m a threat. At worst, I’m an animal. That is unacceptable.

– Delegate C.T. Wilson of the Maryland House
describing his experience dealing with police as a large Black man

There is no featured post this week.

This week everybody was talking about the Chauvin trial, and policing in general

The prosecution is getting close to wrapping up its case against Derek Chauvin. The defense should start this week.

I’ve found the defense attorney’s cross-examination of prosecution witnesses hard to watch, so I suspect the case they present will be even harder. In the words of The New Yorker’s Jeannie Suk Gersen, “The defense’s best hope is to instill doubt about what jurors can plainly see.”

The argument will probably be a kind of rhetorical sleight-of-hand that shows up fairly often, but doesn’t get nearly enough attention: Reduce the scene to a verbal description, then weave a new scene from that description. (I first noticed this technique during the Clinton impeachment trial. The public wasn’t buying that Clinton should be removed for having an affair and covering it up. So Republicans didn’t talk about that directly. Instead, they reduced Clinton’s actions to the legal categories of perjury and obstruction, then argued that perjury and obstruction were impeachable offenses, as they might be in other circumstances.)

So this week the horrified bystanders to Chauvin’s crime will become a potentially dangerous mob. The struggles George Floyd made while he was upright will be painted as plausible threats from his prone, handcuffed, unconscious, and dying body. Floyd’s death will be attributed to drugs and pre-existing health problems, with Chauvin’s knee on his neck merely incidental.

Reassemble that, and the defense’s question becomes: If an officer under threat from a dangerous mob is using force to subdue a resisting suspect, and the suspect happens to die for other reasons, is the officer really guilty of anything? Jurors will be invited to imagine other possible scenes that fit this description, and the blameless officers who might be convicted by the standard they set here.

Such a scene isn’t at all what the videos of Floyd’s death show, but if one juror can be induced to forget or ignore what he saw, Chauvin goes free. As the prosecutor said in his opening remarks: “Trust your eyes.”

Here’s why I expect: Chauvin won’t go free, but he won’t be convicted of the highest charge, second-degree murder. (IMO, that charge is already too low.) Consequently, he’ll face a sentence that will appear to devalue George Floyd’s life. Riots will erupt in Minneapolis and possibly elsewhere. The legal decision will be a done deal at that point, so the question will be whether Black Lives Matter activists can craft some demand that can still be met.

However the trial comes out, it’s worth appreciating that Chauvin was only charged because bystander videos went viral. If not for video, police would have circled the wagons around him and nothing would have happened. I have to wonder how many murders by police haven’t been prosecuted because the only surviving witnesses were other police.

If Chauvin goes free in spite of the video, I don’t know what comes next. Any conservatives who express horror at riots should have to answer this question: What is a community’s appropriate response when police can murder its members, the murder can be posted on YouTube, and they get away with it? What should people do when this happens over and over?

Meanwhile, Sunday afternoon another Black man was killed by a police officer in a Minneapolis suburb.

Chief Tim Gannon of the Brooklyn Center Police Department said an officer had shot the man on Sunday afternoon after pulling his car over for a traffic violation and discovering that the driver had a warrant out for his arrest. As the police tried to detain the man, he stepped back into his car, at which point an officer shot him, Chief Gannon said.

To me, it matters what the warrant was for. Was 20-year-old Daunte Wright a dangerous criminal whose immediate apprehension was necessary for public safety? Or might police have simply followed until Wright realized he wasn’t going to get away? Or did the officer decide that Wright’s failure to obey carried a death sentence, independent of whatever his original crime might have been?

The shooting touched off a riot Sunday night, and the National Guard was called out.

Nobody died in this incident, but it’s still not right: Two Virginia police approached an Army lieutenant at gunpoint, then pepper-sprayed him when he refused to get out of the car until they explained why they had stopped him. The lieutenant has filed a lawsuit against the officers.

Zack Linly comments at The Root:

Why are you like this?—when someone asks a police officer why he’s being asked to exit his vehicle or why he’s being stopped in the first place, why the hell can’t cops respond by…oh, I don’t know…answering the fucking question? Instead, the officers in this instance appear to have responded by typical aggression and equally typical police brutality.

Incidents like this give me sympathy for the “Abolish the Police” movement. I understand that laws need to be enforced somehow, but are men who behave like this really making us safer? Sometimes I think we should just fire everyone and start over (like the former Soviet republic of Georgia did). Maybe we should contract our policing out to civilized countries like New Zealand or Iceland.

I’m going to keep repeating this point until it’s widely acknowledged. Whenever you compare US policing to other countries, somebody raises the point that US criminals are more dangerous, because so many of them have guns. (“I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6” police tell each other.) So: Trigger-happy police is a price we pay for not controlling guns.

In 2018, the Pittsburgh newsletter The Incline answered a reader’s question about what police can or should do when a suspect flees during a felony traffic stop. The answer seems much more reasonable than the police behaviors we’re talking about.

Tom Nolan, a 27-year veteran of the Boston Police Department who’s now an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Merrimack College, said, “Certainly it’s not in compliance with standard police training and protocol to shoot at individuals who are fleeing the police. The police are not trained to do that unless there is a threat to an officer or innocent bystander or an imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death. Absent that there’s no justification.”

A police reform bill passed in Maryland over Governor Hogan’s veto.

The changes do not go as far as some social justice advocates had hoped: Discipline will now largely be decided by civilian panels, for example, but police chiefs maintain a role. Some activists wanted the panels to act independently of police.

Still, the legislation imposes one of the strictest police use-of-force standards in the nation, according to experts; requires officers to prioritize de-escalation tactics; and imposes a criminal penalty for those found to have used excessive force.

A Democratic legislator described the danger he faces from police simply because he is a large Black man.

When I look into that officer’s eyes, they’re not looking at me like I’m another human being. At best, I’m a threat. At worst, I’m an animal. That is unacceptable.

Saturday Night Live’s opening skit featured a disagreement between White and Black Minneapolis news anchors: White anchors are confident that justice will be done in the Chauvin trial, while Black anchors say “We’ve seen this movie before.”

and the virus

Today should pass 120 million people at least partially vaccinated. (I get my first shot tomorrow.) The number of new cases continues to edge upward, running just below 70K per day. Deaths continue to slowly decline.

Anecdotally, I’ve been hearing for weeks that vaccination appointments were easier to get in red states, where more people are skeptical of the vaccines and even of the seriousness of Covid-19. Now there are numbers to back that up.

The official statistics on Covid deaths in Russia don’t look that bad: 707 deaths per million, according to Worldometer, compared to 1,732 in the US. But Saturday’s NYT reported that excess deaths in 2020 are far larger than the official Covid statistics account for. Deaths in Russia during the pandemic months of 2020 were 28% above normal, compared to 17% above normal in the US.

Russians understand that the government is lying to them about Covid deaths, and that produces a nasty result: They don’t trust the government about vaccines either. (Russia produces its own vaccine, which apparently is pretty good.)

One conclusion to draw is that of all forms of government, the one that has handled Covid the worst is authoritarian populism. Of all large countries, possibly the most inexcusably bad responses to the pandemic are the US (Trump), Russia (Trump’s role model Putin), and Brazil (led by Jair Bolsonaro, “the Tropical Trump“).

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (never heard of them before, so take this with a grain of salt) claims that most of the vaccine misinformation on Facebook comes from just 12 people.

Analysis of a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter a total of 812,000 times between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.

and Republicans

I should have linked to this last week: The Trump campaign solved a cash crunch late in the 2020 campaign by scamming its own donors. Recurring donations were the default, which you had to read carefully to opt out of.

The sheer magnitude of the money involved is staggering for politics. In the final two and a half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and their shared accounts issued more than 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors.

The money was paid back using the haul from Trump’s “Stop the Steal” campaign, which was a different kind of scam. Most of the money collected was not spent on contesting the election results.

I keep hearing that Republicans are bound to win back the House in 2022, because midterm elections usually favor the party that’s out of power. But I think the GOP faces an unusual number of problems this cycle, like explaining why they’re voting against things their voters like, and whether or not the party should continue to be a Trump personality cult now that he’s literally one of those crazy old men ranting about socialism.

An RNC donor retreat went to Mar-a-Lago Saturday for a Trump speech. (The Great Man could not come to them.) The speech made headlines for attacking his own party’s Senate leader. (He called Mitch McConnell a “dumb son of a bitch” and a “stone cold loser”.)

As Playbook and the New York Times have reported, Trump has become a complication for donors. They don’t want their money going toward his retribution efforts. Remember: These are exorbitantly wealthy people — some with egos as big as Trump’s — and they are not interested in hearing about how another rich guy had his ego bruised.

The 2022 GOP primaries are going to be nasty affairs, and many of them will be won by QAnon crazies or outright fascists. Republicans proved in Alabama in 2017 and Missouri in 2012 that a bad enough candidate can blow a race anywhere, and 2022 will feature some historically bad GOP candidates.

Fascist/supremacist rhetoric is getting increasingly explicit in Republican circles. Last week I quoted from an article from the Claremont Institute calling for a “counter-revolution” because “most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.”

Thursday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson explicitly endorsed the white supremacist “Great Replacement” theory:

I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term “replacement,” if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate — the voters now casting ballots — with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that’s what happening, actually. Let’s just say it. That’s true. …

It’s a voting-rights question. In a democracy, one person equals one vote. If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who live there. So every time they import a new voter, I become disenfranchised as a current voter.

In the link, Jonathan Chait points out how weird this framing is: The ordinary use of “replacement” would imply that current US citizens are being kicked out as new immigrants come in, which no one thinks is happening.

My employer hires new writers pretty often. If they fired me and gave my job to a new writer, that would be replacement. If they just created a new job, and assigned the writers to work alongside me, that would not be replacement.

If we take Carlson’s “voting-rights” view seriously — which I don’t believe he does, because he only pays attention to its anti-immigrant conclusions, rather than its full implications — then when my white ancestors arrived in the 1840s, they disenfranchised the previously established Americans; every American who turns 18 disenfranchises the rest of us; and our votes gain power whenever any other American voter dies. (Go, coronavirus!)

And let’s not ignore the racism of assuming that immigrants from the largely non-white Third World are “more obedient voters”, rather than human beings who can think for themselves. Also: No one is importing “new voters”. When immigrants arrive here (by their own choice rather because some sinister cabal “imports” them) the road to citizenship is long and full of obstacles. This is especially true for those who circumvent the legal immigration process.

Replacement Theory also comes with a lot of baggage Carlson didn’t mention, but that his white-supremacist fans are well aware of. Chait summarizes:

When Nazis marched in Charlottesville in 2017, they chanted “You will not replace us!” and, somewhat more clarifying, “Jews will not replace us!” The terrorist who gunned down 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, used this slogan (“The Great Replacement”) in his manifesto. …

“Replacement theory” imagines that an elite cabal, frequently described as Jewish, is plotting to “replace” the native white population with non-white immigrants, who will pollute and destroy the white Christian culture.

George Soros is frequently identified as the Jewish mastermind of the replacement plot. That’s why the MAGA bomber mailed him a pipe bomb. Replacement Theory is also why an anti-immigrant gunman killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue.

So why would a TV host mangle the English language in order to get the word “replacement” into his screed? Because he wanted to invoke the baggage. Tucker was giving a shout-out to the Nazis in his audience.

John Boehner has written a book in which he breaks with the Republican Party in its current form. I feel like I ought to read it, but I don’t want to, and I certainly don’t want to pay for it. I anticipate feeling the same frustration with it as the NYT’s reviewer.

Boehner doesn’t acknowledge the role that his generation of Republicans played in building the bridge from Ronald Reagan’s era to our current times. … Boehner’s memoirs are an X-ray into the mind of Reagan-era Republicans who did whatever was necessary to win and who today are seeing the high costs of their decisions.

Boehner’s generation thought they could pander to the reality-denying right-wingers while keeping them under control — basically the same mistake German industrialists and aristocrats made with Hitler. And their heirs are still doing it: Kevin McCarthy knows that Trump is an idiot and QAnon is insane, but he won’t say so. I don’t have a lot of patience with their self-justifications.

On the other hand, the way Trumpism ends is that everybody who’s not a Trumpist leaves the Republican Party, which then goes down to historic defeats until it reorganizes, once again becoming a political party with a message for the political center, rather than an authoritarian cult that sponsors political violence. Max Boot acknowledges that necessity:

those of us on the center-right can’t afford a third-party flirtation. We need to become Biden Republicans.

So I welcome Boehner’s book as a harbinger of a GOP crash-and-burn. But I’m not looking forward to reading it.

and you also might be interested in …

Matt Gaetz’ troubles aren’t getting any better. CNN reports that Trump has refused to meet with him, and Trump certainly failed to mention Gaetz during his Saturday-night ramble in front of GOP donors. Meanwhile, the attorney of his associate Joel Greenberg is hinting at a plea deal.

As I said last week, I’m waiting for some official documentation (like an indictment) before I follow this for any reason other than entertainment. But it is entertaining. The NYT told more of the Greenberg story yesterday.

While I was looking for the SNL video above, YouTube recommended I look at this Jen Psaki press briefing from March 10, where a Fox reporter peppered her with hostile questions about the situation at the Mexican border and school reopenings. This is why I love Psaki: no insults to the reporter, no rants about his network’s obvious bias or falling ratings, no threats to have his White House pass revoked. She fields the questions calmly and answers with facts.

The new Ken Burns series has people talking about Ernest Hemingway again. I’m reminded of a pattern I usually illustrate with Don Henley’s song “The Boys of Summer” (an old-guy reference that readers can update for themselves): A 15-year-old hears it and thinks, “That’s how it feels to be in love.” Ten years later he hears it and thinks, “That’s so immature. I can’t believe I ever liked that song.” Then another ten years pass and he thinks, “That’s how it felt to be in love when I was 15.”

In other words: First you’re captured by a point of view. Then you’re trying to get distance from it. But eventually you feel secure in your distance and can look back more fondly.

I think we might be ready for that third stage of reading Hemingway. First, people read his books and thought: “That’s what it means to be a man.” Then “His books are full of toxic masculinity.” Now maybe we can read him and think: “That’s what it’s like to wrestle with toxic masculinity.”

After all, Hemingway heroes are not John Wayne or James Bond. Their masculine virtues don’t lead to triumphs that right all the wrongs and let them live happily ever after with either the girl of their dreams or an endless parade of Pussy Galores. Hemingway stories center on lonely men struggling to get by in a world that is either godless or ruled by a God who is the Father in all the wrong ways. Maybe they’re a pretty accurate picture of where excessive masculinity leads.

As a writer, I feel indebted to Hemingway as a pivotal figure in American prose. 19th century novels still reflect old-time oral story-telling, where long florid descriptions help pass the endless winter nights. Hemingway changed everything by writing novels in the style of a newspaper, where each column-inch is valuable and needs to accomplish something.

We’re still influenced by him, whether we know it or not. If you’ve ever gotten impatient with an author and thought, “Can we just get on with this?”, or if you’ve had a writing teacher tell you, “Show, don’t tell” — you’ve been influenced by Hemingway.

I haven’t watched Burns’ Hemingway series yet, but I did watch HBO’s “Q: Into the Storm“, in which filmmaker Cullen Hoback tries to identify Q, and ultimately decides it’s Ron Watkins — “CodeMonkey” of the 8kun site that hosts most QAnon discussion.

I recommend watching this as entertainment, but not taking it too seriously. It is entertaining, though, and it’s fascinating/horrifying to see the people Hoback has been following for years show up at the Capitol on January 6.

and let’s close with something musical

Lubalin is a musician who turns “random internet drama” into songs. They show up on his Twitter feed, which is strangely engaging.

The news that caught my attention this week was the Chauvin trial, and related stories of policing in America. But I don’t have much insight to add to what you can easily find elsewhere, so I’m going to let my observations remain a series of short notes rather than assemble them into a featured post.

So there won’t be a featured post this week, and correspondingly, the weekly summary will be longer than usual. I expect it to post around 11 EST.

Other stuff in the summary: the Biden administration is beginning its fight for a big infrastructure bill, which looks like it will have to pass the Senate through reconciliation, without Republican help. Joe Manchin has reiterated his opposition to reforming the filibuster, as well as his nostalgic fantasy of bipartisan cooperation. So voting-rights protection and gun control look dead, and it’s not clear how big an infrastructure package Manchin will allow.

Red states are starting to hit the wall of vaccine resistance already, while allowing large crowds for sporting events. Texas is moving forward with a Georgia-style anti-voting law. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson openly endorsed the white-supremacist “Great Replacement” theory, while John Boehner’s book raises the question of how many establishment Republicans will leave the Trump personality cult that the GOP has become. Ken Burns has got me thinking about Hemingway again, while HBO led me down the QAnon rabbit-hole.

The other day it was siblings day on Facebook and I shared old photos of my Twin Brother Timothy who died on Valentine’s Day in 2004, 17 years ago now.  We had a complicated relationship. 

His short obit in the Chicago Tribune read:

Timothy Peter Murfin, 54, formerly of Chicago, IL and Portland, OR, died in Cincinnati, OH on Feb. 14. Born in Twin Bridges, MT on March 17, 1949 to Willard M. Murfin and Ruby Irene, nee Mills, Murfin, who have both preceded him in death. Survived by children Ira Samuel Murfin of Chicago and Shani Colleen Menz-Murfin of New York City; brother Patrick Murfin (Kathy) of Crystal Lake, IL; stepmother Rae Murfin of Alberton, MT; former spouse Arlene (Packer) Brennan (Michael) of Chicago; former longtime companions Luanne Menz of Georgia and Normandie Nunez of Portland, OR; and three nieces. Memorial service is pending in Chicago.

I was working alone at Briargate Schoolin Cary, Illinois where I was head building custodian.  It was a Saturday, but a basketball program used the gymfrom 8 am to 9 pm.  I had to be there and was little resentful of not spending Valentine’s Day with my wife.  I was shampooing hall carpetswhich were encrusted by tracked mudand salt from a winter’s worth of boots.  About 7 pm I got a call on my cell phone, a new-to-me gizmo that seldom went off.  It was from Kathy with the news that my brother was dead.

It was a shock, but oddly not totally unexpected in that he had abused his body with alcohol and a virtual pharmacopeia of self-prescribed medication for many years.  I was stunned, but went through the motions until the last kid and the last chatty parent was finally locked out of the building.

Two or three days later I was in a cardriven by Ira S. Murfin,  Peter’s—he preferred to be called Peter, the Biblical name he had adopted upon entering a religious order years before—son.  My middle daughter Heather Larsen was with us.  We were driving through the night to Cincinnati to make final arrangements and collect whatever was in his “estate”—the few personal belongings he had hauled with him to Ohio after his virtual exile from Oregon.  An odd conversation we had in that car—maybe more of a rambling monologue by me, would become the gist of the opening words of a memorial poem.  More about that later.

The two of us were adopted at birth by W.M. and Ruby Irene Murfin.  Despite being twins, we were not identical.  In fact in many ways we could not have been more different.  Tim was dark haired and so good looking as a child that women stopped my mother on the street to compliment her.  I was larger, blond, and from the beginning oafish.  In school I was simultaneously a loud know-it-all showing off all of the hours of reading I did while still managing to fail at math and spelling.  I had no friends and was a magnet for bullies.

Tim was not a star student or an athlete.  None-the-less exuded a kind of charisma.  Other kids swirled around him, naturally following his interests.  From always being Roy Rogers in the neighborhood cowboy games, to being the 12-year-old leader of Cheyenne’s sidewalk surfers, to being the first guy in town with a Beatle haircutand Nehru jacket he was popular and naturally had the prettiest girlfriends.

When we moved to Skokie and Niles West High School he and his willowy girlfriend were elected to Prom court.  He planned to be a radio disc jockey and got himself gigs hosting sock hops and basement parties with his portable record player and boxes of 45s.

I was into newspaper, theater, and increasingly radical politics.  Tim got interested in religion and was soon a leader in Young Life, a denizen of church basement coffee houses, and talking about becoming a minister.  Always, a gaggle of kids followed him.

I went away to college at Shimer.  Tim stayed home, mostly to keep his adoring posse together.  He attended Kendal College, a two year school in Evanston.  I came home a long haired, dope smoking hippy and draft dodger.  It turns out he had discovered marijuana too and the use of hallucinogens as spiritual practice.

After I left Shimer and moved to Chicago, I lived with him a couple of times.  Each time he had a full house of roommates and acolytes.  I was the improvident brother he found space for in an unheated room off of an Old Town kitchen or the unfinished basement of a Rogers Park townhouse.  By then he had grown a patriarchal beard and seemed to be gathering his own hippy cult, which would literally gather at his feet as he smoked a fat one and waxed beatifically on arcane mysteries.

Tim married Arlene, a very nice young woman who worshiped him.  She followedhim into an outfit called the Holy Order of Mans, which practiced some sort of mystical catholicism with a small c.  He took the name Peter—the Rock of the Church.  Together they were sent on mission to California.  A few years late Arlene returned to Chicago with their toddler son Ira.

Peter drifted out of the Order and pursued various spiritual paths with complete earnestness.  He lived in Portland and had a day job at an early big box hardware store.  But he yearned to be a saint.  He found folks who thought he might be.  Got into another relationship, had a daughter, Shani and lost that family to boutsof depression and heavy drinking and self-medication.

He cleaned himself up in AA and characteristically became a star.  Soon he was speaking all over Oregon and northern California and re-inventinghimself as a spiritually based addiction councilor.  He was making big plans and chasing various gurusand guides looking more for tips on how to become one of them than for enlightenment.  Or so it seemed to me from my great distance in Chicago when he would phone with plans.

Eventually he became a substance abuse specialistwith the county department of probation.  He entered another relationship with an adoring older woman with a teen age daughter.  But the depression never went away and he fell off the wagon in secret repeatedly.  Each episodebecame more intense.  It became harder to hide.

In all of those years I saw Peter only three times.  We came to Missouri where he was asked as an ordained priest by my fatherto conduct my mother’s funeral.  He did so with grace, although his relationship with my father was strained.  It would become an obsession which he would pour out to me in drunken middle-of-the-night telephone calls.

In the summer of 1983 just after Kathy and my daughter Maureen was born, Peter stayed with us for a week.  It was also his first visit with his ex-wife and son.  He showed up trim, tanned, and handsome.  His black beard was neatly trimmed, his hair barberedto a fare-thee-well, his clothes West Coast casual sharp.  I was still a scraggly post-hippy in thrift shop clothes and a cowboy hat.  I had the family reputation, well earned, as a heavy drinker.  I did nothing to hide it. Peter was supposedly sober.  But Kathy walked in on him pulling from the fifth of whiskey he had hidden in is bag.  It turned out he was killing a bottle a day or more but never actually seemed drunk.

The last time I saw him alive was after we had moved to Crystal Lake.  He was back for another visit to Ira and spent most of his time in Chicago, but came up for a couple of days with us.  By this time he was in rougher shape.  He ambled over to St. Thomas Church across the street where Kathy was an active parishioner and RE volunteer, to ask the Priest for permission to say a private mass at their altar.  He explained that he was also “an ordained Priest in the Higher Order of Melchizedek” and required to say mass daily.  He was upset that he was turned down, saying that some priest pal in Portland had let him use his church.  He made Kathy and the girls uncomfortable.

Back in Portland his life slowly unraveled.  The relapses became more frequent, the depression blacker.  He wrecked cars, lost his job.  Normandie stood by him as long as she could, and supportedhim in the later years.  But in the end he wrecked that, too.  He exiledhimself to a closet of a room in Eugene where some former acolytes tried to help him.  He burned through that, too.

He was virtually homeless and on the run from the law for failure to pay fines for his traffic accidents.  David Sellers, an old friend who he had met hangingout at WLS radio studios while he was in high school and who had lived with us in that Old Town apartment, offered him a bed in suburban Cincinnati.  He was reportedly trying to get himself together and was apparently sober.  He had settled into regular Catholic worship, but he still received tons of mail from all of the cults and gurus he had associated himself with.  Although he couldn’t find work, he finally got qualified for Social Security Disability.  Just after accomplishing that he came home one day, sat down on his bed and died of a massive heart attack.

To our amazement, drugs were not directly involved, except that long abuse had generally wrecked his health.

Ira, Heather, and I arranged to have him crematedand gathered the boxes of his life timewhich were crammed in the closet and under the bed of his room.  Tons of mystical books, art work, beads, crystals, candles, vestments, journals in his meticulous calligraphy.  We packed the urn and the stuff and returned to Chicago.  The stuff mostly went into storage, Ira and I each keeping a few items.

We arranged for a Catholic funeral massat an old Polish parish just west of the Loop.  The Mass was said by, a Milwaukee priest and the brotherof Arlene’s second husband Michael Brennan.  It was solemn and holy and in a lovely old chapel.  Peter would have approved.  After the Mass folks got up to testify about him in one way or another.  When my turn came I read a suite of six elegies that I had been working on for weeks.  This is what I read:

Elegies for My Brother

Timothy Peter Murfin

March 17, 1949-February 14, 2004

I.

Hurtling down an Interstate on any black night,

say the route angling south southeast from Gary

for Indianapolis then slung around the racetrack

to Cincinnati, Queen City of the West,

you realize in an instant that this great gray marvel

was not constructed for the likes of us,

mere civilians on inconsequential errands

encapsulated in puny steel,

that it was wrought for Commerce,

for that endless caravan of behemoths

jeweled in red and yellow charging indefatigably

for endless rendezvous with profit,

and that our vagrant desires to come home or to escape,

to begin a new life or repeat by rote an established tedium,

to make love or to break tender hearts,

or on this one night in this one box loose amid that stream,

to unite the living with the dead,

seize an unworthy opportunity to tag along for the ride.

II.

Roy Rogers is dead.

The King of the Cowboys with his nickel plated, pearl handled revolvers

resplendent in pearl snap shirt and neckerchief

with a cockeyed and confident grin,

the hero of every summer morning adventure

with Dale Evans at his side

and Hopalong Cassidy on loan from the two reeler next door,

has fallen from Trigger,

Bullet noses his lifeless sprawl in the dust.

[Here sing Happy Trails to You]

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.

Happy trails to you, keep smiling’ on ‘till then.

Who cares about the clouds when we’re together?

Just sing a song and bring the sunny weather.

Happy trails to you, till we meet again.

Happy trails to you, ‘till we meet again.

III.

Youth bestows its virtues capriciously,

a dollop of beauty here, audacious valor there,

sweet innocence and brash confidence

doled out as if rationed by a miser,

many seeming to be passed over

and left with only churlish resentment,

bad skin and worse judgment.

But he stood beneath the fountain,

let its waters bathe him in every gift

a dark handsomeness,

a dj’s soothing voice,

charm,

charisma,

so that he dazzled his way through life,

gathering around him tight circles

not just of friends, but followers

who dreamed his dreams.

The hippy guru of Sheridan Road,

they gathered as acolytes at his feet

as he sat with Old Testament patriarchal beard,

eyes blazing one moment,

the beatific smile of yoga saint the next,

in hallucinogenic communion.

And I, no account wastrel with dim prospects,

swung on the icy path of an asteroid

orbiting far, far from that blazing Sol.

IV.

One year, just before Christmas,

he wrote from somewhere on the West Coast.

This year, could I send him a blank book,

bound in leather, hand stitched,

virgin velum pages waiting for his pen?

I want, he wrote, to be a Saint

and no mere tablet or collegiate spiral notebook

would be worthy of the great and inspirational words

which he would meticulously enter

in that fine calligraphic print he assumed.

It struck me, even in my heathen ignorance,

that saints had no ambition but simply were.

But I hunted through the stationers until I found the perfect journal,

inscribing on its fly leaf my own haughty judgment—

See Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1, Verse 2

Vanity of vanities saith the Preacher,

All is vanity.

V.

He took his religion like he took the whiskey

that he stashed,

straight from the bottle,

no ice, no diluting soda.

He demanded the real thing,

raw and powerful,

burning the throat on the way down

but leaving a warm belly glow.

He may have wandered here and there

amid crystals and pyramids,

astrologers and New Age frou-frou,

but settled only where the mysteries

were deep and hard.

For him no dallying among the ladies of

Saturday morning yoga and meditation,

no time for the plain/simple Buddhism

of the agnostic heart so embraced by

disappointed Western rationalists,

but the stern, demanding Tibetan school

with spinning prayer wheels,

real gods and real demons,

The Book of the Dead.

And no Vatican II Catholicism for him,

no priests in sweaters named Father Phil,

no guitar masses and suburban congregations in Ban Lon,

no cheap and easy grace,

only the penitent's worn out knees,

the endless rosaries endlessly repeated,

icons,

medals,

Holy Water,

the prophetic apparitions of Mary,

the stigmata of Padre Pio

in which, if he could,

he would dip his handkerchief

to press to his lips to kiss.

VI.

Something inside of him was broken.

He knew it and spent a questing life

trying to find it,

trying to fix it.

Was it some trauma of childhood,

inflicted by the fragile, damaged woman who raised us

or the god-like but distant father?

He often thought so, obsessed over each moment

of remembered agony and rejection,

taking the hard knocks of ordinary childhood

and building an edifice of unremitting pain,

unable to forget what he had constructed,

unable to forgive.

Or, now that Freud has been cast aside as Fraud,

was it just some accident of biochemistry,

a roll of the dice that elected him

by alchemy of genetic chance

to have neurons that misfire just so?

As a former Friend of Bill W

did he have to assume responsibility

and seize control of the disease himself,

or did the pickling years of hidden bottles,

the various stews of pharmaceuticals prescribed

and self-prescribed

finally overcome that mind?

Was it all three?

Does it matter?

He was broken and tried to repair himself as best he could

and in the process leaned how to balm the wounds

of other troubled souls,

but like the Physician, could not heal himself.

—Patrick Murfin

Grace has more than one meaning. Outside of theology, grace refers to an elegance of presence, a refinement of movement, or an orientation of humility towards others.

Where do you notice elegance around you today?

The Daily Compass offers words and images to inspire spiritual reflection and encourage the creation of a more loving, inclusive and just world. Produced by The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation with no geographical boundary. Please support the publishing of The Daily Compass by making a $10 or $25 contribution (more if you can, less if you can't)! Thank you for your support!

Prince Philip, the U.K. royal who died recently, was known for his commitment to environmentalism. Religion News Service reports that in 1990, Prince Philip compared Neo-paganism and the Abrahamic religions:

[Prince Philip said the] “ecological pragmatism of the so-called pagan religions” was “a great deal more realistic, in terms of conservation ethics, than the more intellectual monotheistic philosophies of the revealed religions.”

Though this statement proved controversial at the time, I have to say he was absolutely correct. In fact, I’d say it’s still pretty much true. 

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111001201/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20210411FFSermon.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111001201/https://content.uusf.org/podcast/20210411FFSermon.mp3

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111001139/http://www.austinuuav.org/audio/2021-04-11_History_is_complicated.mp3

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrMqUBUXW3k]

SERVICE NOTES

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For more information on our church community, visit us on the web at http://www.uulosalamos.org or call at 505-662-2346. 

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Have questions? Need to talk to a minister? Our minister, the Rev. John Cullinan, is available for virtual and phone appointments. Contact him at: revjohn@uulosalamos.org

    MUSIC CREDITS

Sonata No. 5 in E minor, mov. 2, Allegro, BWV 1034 by J.S. Bach. (Heidi Morning, flute & Yelena Mealy, piano). Public Domain.

“For All the Saints,” words: William Walsham How, music: Ralph Vaughan Williams, arr. Ted Cornell. (Yelena Mealy, piano). Permission to stream the arrangement in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.

“There Is More Love Somewhere,” African American hymn. (Jess Huetteman, soprano). Video used by permission of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse, Moscow, Idaho.

“Faith of the LargNo. er Liberty,” words: Vincent B. Silliman, music: Bohemian Brethren, Kirchengesang, 1566. (Nylea Butler-Moore, piano). Public Domain.

Sonata No. 5 in E-minor, mov. 1, Adagio ma non tanto, BWV 1034 by J.S. Bach. (Heidi Morning, flute & Yelena Mealy, piano). Public Domain.

“Going Home,” music based on Largo from 9th Symphony (From the New World) by Antonín Dvořák, arr. by Joseph Martin. (Yelena Mealy, piano). Permission to stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.

“As We Leave This Friendly Place.” words: Vincent B. Silliman, music: J.S. Bach, adapt. From Chorale 38. (UU Virtual Singers & Yelena Mealy, piano; Nylea Butler-Moore, Music Director; Rick Bolton, AV Engineer.) Used by permission.

Permission to stream the music in this service obtained from ONE LICENSE with license #A-730948. All rights reserved.

Permission to stream music in this service obtained from CHRISTIAN COPYRIGHT SOLUTIONS with license #10770

    OTHER NOTES

Call to Worship by Maureen Killoran*
Prayer by Katie Kandarian Morris*
Reading by Sophia Lyon Fahs*

*permission granted by the UUA

    OFFERTORY

Our Share the Plate partner for April is for the scholarship fund for our partner church in Fenyokut, Romania. 100% of all offered this month will be given to our partner church to help fund secondary education for the youth of the church.

We are now using Givelify.com to process the weekly offering: https://giv.li/5jtcps

    SERVICE PARTICIPANTS

Rev. John Cullinan
Tina DeYoe, Director of Lifespan Religious Education
Nylea Butler-Moore, Director of Music
Yelena Mealy, piano
Heidi Morning, flute
UU Virtual Singers
Rick Bolton, Mike Begnaud, and Renae Mitchell AV techs

Attached media: https://web.archive.org/web/20211111001101/https://www.ascboston.org/downloads/podcast/210411.mp3