Hasta La Gadget!

In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, beginning 36 years of continuous war and conflict. Here, 26-year-old writer Sparghai Basir Aryan compares her life in war-torn, oppressive Kabul with that of her mother, who lived peacefully and enjoyed wearing skirts and no headscarf, something unheard of today. The women have much in common: both studied at Kabul University and worked for Save the Children. But war made their lives dramatically different.

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Currently playing at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts is the play “The Velocity of Autumn” written by Eric Coble and performed by TheatreWorks. It opened at the Booth Theater on Broadway in April 2014, and received a Tony Award for best actress.

I was invited to become involved because of the show’s theme. It has two characters, Alexandra, an 80-year-old demented woman and her son, mostly estranged. As the curtain rises we find the mother asleep in a chair in her second-floor Brooklyn apartment. Her son is climbing outside in a tree to gain entrance through a window because his mother has barricaded herself within.
She awakens startled, and immediately brandishes a homemade bomb that is always at hand to fend off imagined intruders, particularly those who presumably were sent by her other children intending to put her away. She is a feisty character and resists her son’s reaching out. She displays warped paranoia fearing loss of her independence. The script reveals her prior encounters with neighbors and others who ostensibly were struggling to institutionalize her. Her past interest in painting yielded to her demented hiding of all her canvases. Her son makes repeated overtures trying to inject some rationality into her contorted reality. Her food supply is precarious. She is isolated into a solitary world. The script is laced with sometimes comic but always deeply somber references to her overall decay into old age. The most poignant line of the play occurs when she remarks “I am no longer me.” The full impact of aging’s detrimental entropy is evidenced. She is persistent in her eagerness to die, but insists on staying home.

The play was powerfully pertinent to me as it represents the increasingly common struggle at the end of life to retain autonomy and efficacy. I was struck by the chasm between Alexandra’s “less me” perspective and that of Mae Sarton who wrote “as I age I become more me.”

Does aging represent less or more? a reward or punishment? a resource or liability? The play was particularly poignant for me because of the loss of my wife 10 months ago from Alzheimer’s Disease. Her last years were a torment for her, me, and kids. Finally my wife mercifully died from a head injury prompted by her dementia. She died at home with no pain, tubes, or loneliness.
But far beyond my personal identification with the play was the recognition that its message represents a new world calendar with autumn upon us. We are all growing older. It is therefore not how old you are that matters so much as and how you are old. This qualification is largely negotiable. Choice or Fate?

After the curtain I was invited to the stage to dialogue with the artistic director. “What did the play mean?” “Was it real?” Nearly everybody stayed for the Q and As in the provocative postscript. We all enjoyed this discourse with many personal anecdotes emerging. The play touched everyone.

The play ends with the son’s frustrating effort at creating an interface was the mother’s faltering mind. He at last establishes some engagement. They leave together unlocking the barricaded door to go to the Guggenheim Museum which was an old favorite haunt.

Bortz’s Law is reaffirmed : It is never too late to start, but it is always too soon to stop.

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The Republican gyrations over Trump are textbook examples of not learning your lesson. The Republican “Establishment” was victimized by a genuine voter revolt. Having lost elections, their current remedy is a palace coup — a wine-bar putsch — that will seize control of the Party from those pesky elected delegates.

A little self-examination would tell these folks that they’ve lost contact with their voters. It turns out that a nice majority of Republican primary voters are not doctrinaire conservatives. They are disaffected middle-class white people who were promised a better economic future and instead got upper income tax cuts and threats to Social Security and Medicare. Trade deals and immigration became symbols of broken Republican promises. Guns, abortion and gay rights weren’t central to their concerns. The Donald, who is a good listener sometimes, heard it, and repeated it. Good-bye movement conservatives like Cruz and Walker, and their fellow-travelers like Rubio and Bush.

The Republicans do have real problems. The transition from movement leader to national candidate has not been kind to Trump. All of his many limitations are visible. The stench of catastrophe is in the air. It is unlikely the Donald can transform himself. The House and Senate could flip to the Democrats. But a successful putsch at the Republican Convention won’t improve their chances. It would send the Trump voters streaming out of the Republican Party for good. Which is worse, a thorough thrashing in 2016, or a Party with no electoral base for decades? That’s the Republican choice in Cleveland.

The Democrats have better understood the dynamic. Hillary’s responses have been politically smart and persuasive. She has found an effective voice and persona. The national security speech and the economic security speech made reasonable cases for her ideas, nailed the Donald with his own words, and reminded voters of what they like about Hillary. She is certainly something of a wounded duck herself. But she saw her opportunity and she took it.

By the time Trump emerges from Cleveland it will be clear that an electoral rout is likely. There will be three camps circling the cadaver. First, the Republican populists who will not forgive the Establishment betrayal of Trump. Second, the Movement Conservatives who still think that a party agenda marked by economic austerity, high-end tax cuts, undone Social Security and Medicare, guns, gays and abortion is the wave of the future. Paul Ryan is their poster child. Third, the Never-Trumpers who abhor his personality but aren’t right-wing ideologues. Jeb leads here. Rubio could but he can’t bring himself to cut the cord with Trump.

Only the moderate Never-Trumpers can pick up the pieces in the aftermath. The other two will simply smack each other silly. But to be positioned, they can’t try to lead a coup at the convention. The plotter who wields the knife rarely survives the revolution. The Never-Trumpers should just shut up until December. The Donald figured it out for them: “Just please be quiet. Don’t talk. Please, be quiet. Just be quiet.” That’s good advice. Who knows if they will take it?

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Dear Nurse Katz,

My doctor recently ordered an extra X-ray of my hip due to what he thought might be a hairline fracture. Unfortunately, he asked me to come in for another X-ray since the image was not clear. I was pleased to learn that it was not fracture and just some very bad bruising, but not pleased to get a bill for the repeat X-ray. Can I get charged for this?

Susan
Orlando, Fl

Susan, this happens more than many people know, and I find the busier the facility, and the more the outsourcing, the less “quality control” on services like reading X-rays. If an X-ray was performed more than once due to an error with the initial X-ray such as a wrong body part, misreading of the X-ray or clarity of the film, you should not be billed for a mistake made by the radiology technician or the physician. Be sure to bring this up with the billing department and maybe even the risk manager. Also, watch out for what is known as “ghosting.” This is when the radiologist “rubber-stamps” the reading of your X-ray by a technician without giving it more than a glance. Unfortunately, electronic “signatures” on radiology reports have made this type of practice easy to do since medical records are now digitized in most facilities. This type of forging of the radiologist’s signature has made this practice more common because it is easy and not as detectible, saving time and money for the facility and the doctor.

For more ways to avoid paying extra on your medical bill or that “medical ghost,” be sure to get your copy of the book “Healthcare Made Easy.”

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In 2001, artist Lauren Adelman and juvenile defender Francine Sherman began offering art workshops to girls incarcerated at the Spectrum Detainment Center in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The goal was to empower these young women, so often unseen and unheard, through creative expression. 

Fifteen years later, this workshop has blossomed into what’s now known as Artistic Noise, a program designed to bring visual arts practice and entrepreneurial skills to young people who are incarcerated, on probation, or somehow involved in the justice system. An exhibition entitled “Infinite Revolution,” on view this summer, will celebrate the immense artistic talent of the individuals involved in the Artistic Noise community, and their bold spirits that refuse to be muffled. 

“So much of what we do and what we’re focused on is give kids who are often silent a way to have their voices heard and their stories told,” Adelman explained to The Huffington Post. “Whether they are physically removed from society or just don’t feel like they have a voice, through art they are making this visual noise.”

Since its inception, Artistic Noise has expanded to instruct both boys and girls in New York as well as Boston, using four distinct elements of programming embedded within the Artistic Noise umbrella. There are studio art workshops, in which young people in lock-up are engaged in long term artistic projects using unorthodox materials and techniques, often revolving around a single theme relevant to their lives. There are art therapy workshops, in which certified Art Therapists work with youth on probation in both individual and group settings, using creative expression to coax buried feelings and thoughts into the open under professional supervision. 

“Detention was horrible,” one artist explained in a video compilation made by Artistic Noise. “The food was horrible. Being in there, you’re like an animal caged in all day. You just get everything taken away. The only thing that kept me going was when Artistic Noise came in. That was the only thing I looked forward to doing.”

For older and more experienced artists, the Art, Entrepreneurship and Curatorial Program offers an intensive curriculum for individuals interested in pursuing art professionally. The program allows young people to hone their artistic skills, collaborate with their peers, curate art shows, and sell original work. These selected participants are responsible for curating the Artistic Noise annual art show, as well as selecting which artworks should be used for marketable products to eventually benefit the organization. 

The program looks out for those who are released from detention centers with no resources, no help, no experience, and no guidance. As one artist who went on to work for Artistic Noise explained: “When I got out of lock up I was 18, I didn’t have a job, I had an adult record. They were like, okay, we’re going to hire you. It gives you that chance to turn your life around, to be a part of the community. And also give back to the community.”

Finally, in 2012, Adelman began a Youth Leadership Development Program, with the hopes that one day, those who participated in Artistic Noise could eventually lead it. This program teaches Artistic Noise graduates how to be mentors, helpers, and advocates, training them to be assistant teachers to the next generation of young artists. 

“We want them to be able to say, ‘Hey, look at me, we’re human beings, we have great things to say, we have a lot to contribute to society,'” Adelman continued. “This is their way of taking control and finding power within themselves.”

The artwork featured in “Infinite Revolution” is raw, vulnerable, powerful and courageous, addressing pressing contemporary issues from police brutality and women in the media to the daily sadness of missing home. 

One group piece, titled “Figures of Authority,” examines the various authority figures that make up our world, from police officers to the president of the United States to security guards, judges, lawyers and case workers. Questions of what power is, how it is used and abused, are translated into striking swaths of black and white pigment, sprinkled with glitter.

“So many people abuse their power and call themselves a figure of authority,” one artist, Ebony, explains in a statement. “Real people in REAL positions of power help lift you up. They get you where they are mentally and physically. There is enough room at the top for everyone.”

Another work, titled “I am Woman,” by artist Briana, takes inspiration from Hank Willis Thomas’ recent series “Unbranded,” examining how a century of advertisements have shaped our conception of what a woman is.

“My piece is called ‘I Am Woman’ because women are used in advertisements for their bodies to make a product look sexy so people want to purchase the item,” Briana wrote. “The media is only interested in their bodies and not their brain or who they really are. Also, a woman’s body is stereotypically supposed to be a certain size. The media only portrays White women who are small and skinny as beautiful, but this is not true. I combined a White woman who is small and skinny with a Black woman who is thick and curvy. Their heads are combined and bigger than their bodies to take attention away from their bodies and place the attention onto their heads to show women are more than their bodies. Let’s instead think about women’s intelligence and what they have to say.”

In another one of Briana’s works, titled “Sandra. Why?” she grapples with the unjust death of Sandra Bland following her arrest over a minor traffic violation in 2015. Rendered in the style of Mickalene Thomas, Briana depicts a smiling Brand amidst a vibrant pink backdrop, with question marks floating ominously throughout. 

“The title of my painting is ‘Sandra. Why?'” the artist expressed. “This project was brought about from The New Jim Crow book. It states, ‘from 1997 to 2007 the number of women in prison has increased by 8,332 percent.’ This quote stood out to me because females now are being arrested for unjust reasons. Most people have misconceptions about crimes that aren’t true. For example, people believe that people in jail deserve to be in jail, that jails treat people humanely and that jail is just a way of punishment. I chose Sandra Bland as the focus of my piece to prove this. She was arrested for a driving ticket, then mysteriously died in lock up. She didn’t deserve to be there in the first place. She died for no reason.”

Artistic Noise shows just how powerful art is — not just as a pastime but as a tool, as a path, as a means of survival. Clearly, it is no average art studio. “A prison is very different from an art studio,” Adelman said. “So we’re creating a new space for creativity and risk taking, so everyone gets heard.”

See the artists of Artistic Noise in “Infinite Revolution” on view from June 23 to June 26, 2016 at Commons Gallery in New York. 

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