We live in a large, one story, L-shaped house. Though 70 years old, we are only the third owners. It is a contemporary, and was built as a retirement home by “Mom” and “Pop” Schwartz, who made their fortune in corrugated boxes. It sits on a corner lot, one block west of Boston College.

The lay-out was to their specifications, with his and her master bedrooms a few steps up the hallway, master bath in between, a guest bedroom down the corridor with a bathroom that also functions as the public bathroom. The front door opens to a large open foyer. On the left, a few steps down is a large living room,  across from that is a den (since a major renovation, the den now functions as a sitting room, and the new den is at the back of the foyer, renovated from a former porch). The dining room is behind the former den, across from the living room. Behind the dining room, at the corner of the L is the kitchen and breakfast room, and a side entrance into the house. Along the side of the house, above the garage, is a suite of rooms; bedroom, bathroom, sitting room and several large closets. Those were maids rooms in the original design. I use them as a permanent guest room and my study.

My children were quite young at the time of this story. We used Mr. Schwartz’s bedroom as our master bedroom. Four-year-old David was in Mrs. Schwartz’s room. The original guest room, a few steps down the hallway, was the nursery for infant Jeffrey. My husband traveled a lot and I was home alone with these young children.

At nursery school, David made a full-size drawing of himself. He laid down and the teachers out-lined his form, which he colored in. It was on a large piece of paper and we taped it to his bedroom wall. You can barely see it on the wall behind little David (with his uncle, Gerry Pfau), in the Featured photo. At the time of this story, we had moved the drawing to the wall at the head of the bed. The masking tape often didn’t stick well.

One night, while home alone, after the kids were in bed, I sat, writing in my study, at the opposite end of the house from the childrens’ rooms. I did not plan to be there long, so did not have the nursery monitor with me. Suddenly, I heard a high-pitched voice say, quite distinctly, “Help me, help me”. I jumped up and ran to check on my children, both too far away for me to have heard them, even if they had been screaming. Of course, Jeffrey couldn’t even speak at this point in his life, but first I checked on him. He was fast asleep.

Then I checked on David. He lay, cowering in his bed in the dark. The drawing had fallen off the wall and covered him completely. To this day, he swears he said nothing, though he was shaking like a leaf. Even if he had, I couldn’t have heard him from my study at the other end of the house, but that voice had drawn me out to check on him and come to his rescue. I pulled the sheet of paper off him and comforted him until he slept again.

I thought long and hard about whose voice I heard. I distinctly heard it call out to me. I came to believe it was the benevolent spirit of Mrs. Schwartz, looking out for my children, who warned me that night that David needed me. I never heard her again, but I always thought after that night, that she looked out for my children.

One of my favorite things to do when I was a kid: Grab a book and climb a tree and read until someone came looking for me.
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As I’ve been following the young activists today who are taking a leadership role in a fight my generation seemed to have given up on, it brought me back to another time when young people felt both helpless and passionate about a cause. In our day, it was the anti-war movement. What is tragically similar to what those brave, outspoken kids from Parkland and elsewhere are doing, and what kids my age did in 1968 and beyond, is that they also have real skin in the game, which is a tremendous motivating factor. The boys I knew during the Vietnam era had the draft looming over them. They knew they could be drafted and sent to fight an enemy far away in a country we didn’t know much about. Students of draft age took to the streets in protest, feeling helpless no more.

The kids today have always known about school shooters and young men (always young men) with guns coming to do them harm. Their skin in the game today is literal. There is no enemy far away in a country they don’t know much about. The enemy is in your English class, or maybe at the lab table next to you or across from your PE locker. It’s real. And for years, we, the adults, for the most part have felt helpless to make any changes to the law as it pertains to gun ownership. For the most part, we have felt helpless, though our hearts break over the senseless deaths of children in a place that should be a safe haven.

I applaud the actions of the teenagers across this country. I’ll stand in solidarity with them as they take the lead.

We’ve been waist deep in the big muddy for far too long.

Then, as now, “the Big Fool says to push on.” It’s up to us to make sure we don’t let the Big Fool lead us further into the deep muddy. Enough.

https://youtu.be/57Esi4AUVpA

Tom Morello and Taj Mahal pay tribute to Pete Seeger in this rendition of Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

The thrilling tale of the Dread Pirate Roberts and Rodents Of Unusual Size and the Cliffs of Insanity and the Zoo of Death.
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Hey kids, let's put on a convention!
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Never underestimate the fortitude of a passionate, teenage survivor carrying the weight of her brothers and sisters on her narrow shoulders.
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I drifted through high school, worried about my grades, seeking good roles in the school plays, yearning until I could be in the top choir (I didn’t like being in the all-girl’s Glee Club and Girl’s Choir…we sang simple songs and at one point, I was made an alto simply because I had a strong voice, could read music and couldn’t control my break. I never got over it).

I wanted a steady boyfriend and never had one. I followed “current events”; wasn’t strongly political, aside from being liberal and hating Vietnam. But protest…not in my nature. I worked hard to get into a good college and tried to “fit in”, but sort of never did. I had a very small group of friends (and am still friendly with two of those women).

I was horrified when a kid I briefly dated (and fought with my parents over because he wasn’t Jewish) went off to Chicago in the summer of ’68 (I was ensconced in Northern Michigan at my wonderful summer arts camp). He participated in the protests at the Democratic Convention, came back to school in the fall, having been beaten by police with billy clubs. He was never the same, grew his hair long, withdrew, became sullen and smoked a lot of dope. I saw some of the brightest kids in my class become pot heads. It worried me.

Junior year, I dated a “5 year man”. He had flunked a year…so inappropriate for me, but he was fun and cute and got me hot. He did a lot of drugs. I tried to get him off everything but grass, which, though I didn’t yet smoke, I knew was harmless. He came to my house, stoned out of his mind. My mother never knew. We were in “Arsenic and Old Lace” together. He played Jonathan, the Boris Karloff character. I was Elaine, the finance, living next door, but I also was make-up supervisor and lead person, so I did his make-up personally. I made it gruesome. He had forged a peace symbol in shop class out of metal and put it on a leather strap. I wore it around my neck for months until the next play when I found him making out with someone else backstage. He showed up at my house once after I went off to college. He had started using heroin. I was horrified. I heard he worked on the docks in Detroit and died years ago in an accident, probably while high.

The boy who played the lead opposite me (the Cary Grant role in the movie) gave me the beads in the Featured photo. We never dated, but were friends. I never knew it, but he, also, got heavily involved with drugs. While I was away at college, I heard he died of a heroin overdose, very young.

We are all concerned by the opioid crisis now, but to me, it feels like aspects of it have been around for a very long time, since I know two people from high school who were affected by drug deaths. The current crisis is fueled by addiction to prescription painkillers. When pill seekers can’t get more doses, heroin, or fentanyl, a cheap, powerful, synthetic heroin becomes the killer drug of choice. People are dying, addiction is easy and getting clean is difficult and expensive. Criminals are profiting and law enforcement seems to think that locking people up rather treatment is the answer.

A few weeks ago, Trump came to New Hampshire (first primary state in the country and a place with a terrible opioid problem) and suggested that drug dealers face the death penalty. As one campaign ineffectually said, “JUST SAY NO” to such draconian measures. Local community efforts help in treatment. Being more judicious with pain medications will help. The problem is serious and takes serious treatment and effort. Not slogans and gun-slingers.

In high school, I saw problems around me and I did the little bit that I could personally to make a difference. I was never caught up in large protest movements. I loved the arts and kept with friends who were also involved in the arts, while also attending all the sporting events that I could, when not rehearsing for a show. I lived in a sheltered world and only occasionally peeked out when someone I knew personally was affected by the outside swirl.