Steve Parks

Spy Moment: Remembering Victims of Violence

July 5, 2020 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

The Fourth of July Artists for Justice outdoor show, comprised of 26 paintings of African-Americans who died of police or vigilante violence, drew a steady stream of viewers at the new Aurora Street location of organizer Nancy Tankersley’s art studio. An estimated 300 visited the outdoor gallery.

The paintings, all roughly one-foot square, were displayed along a wooden fence enclosing a courtyard next to the studio at 11 S. Aurora St., formerly home to Atelier 11, an architectural firm now on Dover Street. Twenty or so masked and socially distanced perusers followed yellow directional arrows past each portrait while consulting handout binders containing the stories behind each fatality.

One of the African-Americans who attended was Yolanda Acree, a Federalsburg collagist—”digital and analog,” she says, referring in the latter to works on paper. She heard about the show on the Social Action for Racial Justice site on Facebook. “I wanted to see the artists’ rendition of these faces I’d seen only on the news. I’m happy to see this support of Black Lives Matter. And surprised,” she added, citing the Eastern Shore’s racially checkered history.

All the works in the show are solo portraits except for the painting by Katie Theeke of the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing victims in Birmingham. Theeke depicts Carol Denise McNair, 11, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14, strolling carefree outside of what may be the church where they died at the hands of four Ku Klux Klan racists, the last of whom was convicted in a long-delayed prosecution led by current Democratic Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama.

That painting was haunting to gaze upon no more than, except by a factor of four, as the visage of Tamir Rice, clearly a child, as painted by Mignonne La Chapelle. He was 12 when shot to death by a Cleveland policeman who fired within seconds of his cop car arriving on the scene. Tamir was holding a plastic toy gun, menacing no one.

Of the two portraits by Tankersley—one of Michael Brown shot to death by a Ferguson, Mo. policeman—the joyful face of Hattie Carroll, wearing what looks to be her Sunday best ladies church hat, bright pink, evokes a tragic irony. As a barmaid, she was clubbed to death by a Charles County drunk at Baltimore’s long-gone Emerson Hotel.

Other paintings incorporate bits of text, including that of George Floyd by Sara Linda Poly. It bears the words, “When George was young he said I want to touch the world,” to which was added as an epitaph, “and so he has.” One of two Philando Castille portraits is Laura Kapolchok’s framed by the inscription “Son father friend cousin. Honor student mentor.”

A local teenager who died in 2018 at the hands of police is Anton Black of Greensboro. While many of the victims painted here appear to relive happier times, Lori Yates captures him in a pensive mood, almost as if anticipating trouble ahead.

The one piece that’s not strictly a painting is a collage by Maire McArdle of Stephon Clark. Among the images, besides that of his face, is a reference to a helicopter pilot who directed cops to his location and mistakenly reported that Clark was pointing a weapon. He held a cell phone instead.

Meanwhile, an accordionist provided unobtrusive background music suitable for muffled conversation through masked mouths. Ordinarily, there might have been refreshments and finger food, as customary at art gallery openings. But buffet-style noshing is out of the question as long as COVID-19 prevails.

The show, however, is likely to reappear, Tankersley says. “All the artists I contacted after the first Black Lives Matter rally in Easton on May 30 were eager to jump right in. Now we’re looking to take the show to Dorchester in September.”

Although the portraits are not for sale, certain galleries, she acknowledged, might take on such a newsworthy show to draw potential customers to other art that carries a price tag.

Steve Parks is a retired journalist, art writer and editor now living in Easton.

The Arts: Artists for Justice Paint 26 to Honor Black Lives Matter

July 3, 2020 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

On this Fourth of July, a group of Easton artists celebrate the lives while mourning the violent deaths of African-Americans who, while citizens of the United States, have been and, as we see from recent atrocities, still are treated as second-class citizens.

When Nancy Tankersley and her family attended a May 30 Black Lives Matter rally along Marlboro Avenue in Easton she said she was “overcome by a young African-American woman who was so sincere, so appreciative as she drove by reading all the signs and shouting out her thanks. Her graciousness in the face of all that has happened within black communities shamed me. All I had done was stand there for an hour of my life while we waved signs and chanted. It woke me up to the realization that we all need to do more.”

Armaud Arbery by Rhonda Ford

As Tankersley is a painter, a professional artist and teacher of art, her natural inclination, her best means of demonstrating support was to organize an art show relevant to this cause. The featured artist of the Waterfowl Festival and one of the co-founders of the Plein Air Festival brought together 25 artists who work and live in and around Easton for an “Artists for Justice” exhibit outdoors. Each artist chose to paint a portrait of a particular African-American who lost his or her life due to systemic racism in the United States. Not all were victims of police violence as in the case of George Floyd whose murder by neck compression—a chokehold by knee—sparked the current international groundswell of street protests and social media condemnation. Justice in the wake of their deaths, whether at the hands of police or vigilantes, failed all of them.

Tankersley reached out to artists who she has mentored in her Easton studio along with other downtown artists. The show, which runs from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, the Fourth of July, was conceived by a white artist and painted by white artists. As such, Tankersley sees it as “an apology for being silent for so long. Of the hundreds of artists, I have taught, I can count on one hand the number of black students. I want to rectify that.” Meanwhile, she says, “This is a learning experience for us to get to know these people who were murdered.” To that end, all of those attending can pick up a booklet containing the stories behind each portrait. She hopes it will be seen as an invitation for a wider audience of artists of “all colors, ages and ability to participate. . . .”

The show will be held at 11 Aurora St. on the edge of Easton’s Arts and Entertainment District and adjacent to the historic Hill neighborhood that has been home to free African-Americans since long before the Emancipation Proclamation. The art will be displayed on a wooden fence next to the renovated former home of Atelier 11, which will soon become the home of Tankersley and her husband Carl as well as the site of her new studio.

Tankersley contributed two portraits to the show “to even it out’’—to 26—one for each of the other artists. One by Tankersley is of Michael Brown who shooting death in a confrontation with a Ferguson, Mo. police officer spurred the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014. The other is of Hattie Carroll who in 1963 was killed in Baltimore by a drunken, racist brute from Charles County who assaulted employees at the Eager House restaurant before moving on to the Emerson Hotel for more drinks. After ordering a bourbon, Billy Zantzinger beat Carroll, a barmaid and mother of nine, on the shoulder, neck and head with a cane and called her vile names because, he complained, she took too long to deliver his booze. When his wife complained he struck her with the cane, too. Carroll died of a brain hemorrhage a few hours later.

Her death was immortalized a year later by Bob Dylan in “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” on his “Times They Are a-Changin’ ‘’ album. (Apparently, the times haven’t changed enough.) Dylan wrote in part:

But you who philosophize, disgrace and criticize all fears,
Take the rag away from your face, now ain’t the time for
your tears.

A year earlier, Dylan wrote “The Death of Emmett Till.” A Chicago teenager, Till was visiting cousins in Mississippi when may have wolf-whistled a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a grocery store. Her husband, Roy, heard about it and accompanied by his half-brother J.W. Millam abducted Till from his great-aunt’s house. They threw him in a truck, pistol-whipped him along the way and finished beating Till to death in a barn. They threw his body into the Tallahatchie River. It was recovered, bloated and disfigured in time for a trial in which the Bryant and Millam were acquitted by an all-white male jury. One year later, Bryant and Millam gave an interview with Look magazine in which they freely confessed to the murder knowing that double jeopardy shielded them. Till’s body was returned to Chicago where his mother insisted on an open casket at her son’s funeral. The story, plus photos of the body, became a sensation when published in black-oriented Jet magazine. Till’s murder in 1955 is widely marked as a catalyst of the modern civil rights movement.

This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that
ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all us folks that think alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.

Besides these historical references represented in “Artists for Justice” are those that are on the front burner of the current Black Live Matter movement. Among these

Breonna Tayllor by Joan Hart

are Breonna Taylor, the Louisville, Ky., EMT worker shot to death in her own bed during a no-knock police raid in search of a drug dealer who, if they checked, was already in custody. Fearing a home invasion, Taylor’s boyfriend shot at the invaders, not knowing they were cops. In their return fire, the police raiders shot Taylor 10 times. Her portrait was painted by Joan Hart.

Another from this year is Ahmaud Arbery, murdered by armed neighborhood vigilantes in Georgia who say they suspected him of what? Speeding while jogging? No, it was jogging while black in their white enclave. Travis McMichael and his father Gregory followed Arbery in a pickup truck while they were just hatefully stupid enough to have the murder recorded on video by a trailing car driven by Roddie Bryan. Police waited months before charging the vigilantes, waiting until after the video surfaced. Arbery’s portrait was painted by Rhonda Ford.

Other portraits include that of Freddie Gray whose death in police custody erupted in violence in Baltimore in 2015. That painting is by Mary Ellen Mabe. The George Floyd painting is by Sara Linda Poly. Portraits of two other recent victims of police violence—Raynard Brooks, shot in the back in Atlanta after being found sleeping in his car, and Elijah McClain, who died after being stopped for wearing a ski mask, wrestled to the ground in chokehold and injected with a tranquilizer—are by Kathie Rogers and Maggie Sarfaty, respectively.

While the show is open for just the Fourth, Tankersley hopes to exhibit it in galleries or other locations in the area. “Maybe it could be part of a mini-movement,” she said.

Spy Review: Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival ‘Virtual Virtuosi’ by Steve Parks

June 5, 2020 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

The Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival celebrates its 35th anniversary with five concerts. But they won’t be performed at the usual venues, such as the Academy Art Museum or Christ Church across the street in Easton. As you probably surmised from this year’s festival title, “Virtual Virtuosi,” the concerts can be enjoyed streaming online without masks or social distancing.

The first and last concerts in the festival series were performed and recorded before a live audience at Queens College in New York just before COVID-19 necessitated a shutdown of public events, sheltering in place, and all the rest. Others were performed in homes of the artists, a concept many of us have become familiar with by way of TV and Zoom. Most of the concerts feature the usual suspects festival patrons have come to know over the decades, including co-artistic directors Marcy Rosen, a cellist, and violinist Catherine Cho.

All concerts begin streaming at 5:30 p.m. and remain available for viewing for 24 hours afterward.

The festival opener on June 4, streaming until about six on Friday, June 5, was recorded March 6 in Queens with Rosen accompanied by pianist Diane Walsh, performing sonatas by Beethoven and Chopin. The third movement of the Chopin piece, Rosen declared in opening remarks recorded for festival viewers, is “perfect.” We won’t argue with her assessment, which isn’t to say the Beethoven is not also a revelation as performed here. In fact, it was a revelation back in 1796 when he composed two sonatas for cello and piano, which were unprecedented as the cello had not yet been liberated as a lead instrument. His Opus 5 Adagio opens slowly, almost mournfully, before rising in intensity. It then settles into a melodic flow accented by piano teardrop notes in answer to dramatic cello flourishes.

The next movement, suggests an emotional outburst with its, at times, frenetic pace. Walsh’s keyboard skills are evident without dominating. The Rondo, with its ferocious finish, is a test for the most accomplished cellists of this or any era. Rosen shows who’s master by taming the dense anxiety of these passages for the more hopeful final Allegro as if gliding with acceleration to a happy ending.

Beethoven named his two cello/piano sonatas for the King of Prussia, an amateur cellist himself, in hopes of a reward. We think he deserved better than the gold snuff-box that was his prize—even counting the gold francs stuffed inside.

The Chopin sonata comes with a storyline implied, of course, in the music itself. But Rosen supplies a more biographical context in her remarks. The piece was written at the time of Frederic Chopin’s breakup with the woman known to her friends and intimates as Aurore. By her pen name, George Sand, she was better known as one of the leading romantic novelists of 19th century Europe. As women artists were so disdained at the time, she may not have even been published had she stuck to her birth name.

We can’t be sure from Chopin’s Opus 65 sonata who dumped whom, but considering the turmoil, he expresses in the opening Allegro, we can guess he’s the one who felt bereft. The highly emotional Scherzo reflects a swirl of self-pity and impending resentment. The third movement Largo, Rosen’s favorite, bespeaks an emotional resurrection as if to say, hey, I’ll get over it. To Rosen, it’s “perfect’ in the sense that the cello is the perfect instrument for this expression, soulfully delivered along with Walsh’s almost whispery accompaniment. The finale plays like a rush of water under the bridge, signifying life goes on.

The concert on Sunday, June 7, from the homes of various artists, offers a program of Bach and Robert Schumann.

Please go here to enjoy the concerts. A viewing tip. Some devices may require you to go directly to YouTube if the chesapeakemusic.org link doesn’t work. Just go to youtube.com and click on the Chesapeake Music logo.

Op-Ed: COVID Unmasking Donald Trump by Steve Parks

May 20, 2020 by Steve Parks 4 Comments

Everybody in America should be outraged. But first, allow me to put outrage into personal context. You, too, may know others close to you whose situations apply.

A family loved one has a kidney condition. While not imminently critical, it’s serious enough that she followed nephrologists’ recommendation to enlist herself as a transplant candidate. Two immediate family members took blood tests to determine if either might be donor candidates. One is not compatible and the other is awaiting test results. (Full disclosure: I’m ineligible due to cardiac issues and relatively advanced age.)

This was concerning enough before the COVID-19 pandemic. But as hospitals in New York, where both donor candidates live, became overwhelmed, we learned that coronavirus patients placed on ventilators often also require dialysis. This resulted in critically ill kidney patients, unaffected by the virus, going untreated in a timely manner due to shortages of dialysis devices.

Thankfully, as the peak of the crisis subsides, for now, dialysis is again available to kidney patients regardless of positive or negative coronavirus status.

It’s terrible that doctors and nurses are put in positions of playing God to decide who’s most in need of dialysis and/or ventilators. But here’s the outrage, obscene in its flaunting: The simple courtesy of wearing a mask in public spaces while we’re all potential pandemic spreaders is beyond Trump’s warped sense of human decency. Because he literally and figuratively thumbs his bare nose at his own White House guidelines for “mitigation” that probably saved tens of thousands of lives—even as we approach 100,000 deaths due to this virus—Trump encourages fellow Americans, by his wishfully delusional example, to be reckless as we begin relaxing stay-at-home advisories. The president’s in-your-face arrogance led to an outbreak in his own home as both his valet and a vice-presidential aide tested positive.

To my unofficial account, the president has made only two truthful statements regarding the COVID-19 disaster—other than those scripted for him: “I’m not a doctor.” True. “I’m not going to wear a mask.” True, so far.

Trump believes wearing a mask signals weakness. In other words, he’s a wimp. That’s why before the White House outbreak, almost no one near the Oval Office wore masks. That his valet who serves him meals contracted the virus may account, in part, for Trump’s defiant proclamation that he’s now taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative COVID medication. (Despite zero empirical evidence and against his own FDA recommendations.) Some believe he was telling the truth because until a few weeks ago he relentlessly promoted the medication approved for malaria and lupus. But I suspect his primary motivation had everything to do with the “60 Minutes” interview with Dr. Rick Bright the night before. Bright was until recently the point man in developing vaccines or treatments for COVID. But he was demoted to a less consequential position within the National Institutes for Health due to his reluctance to endorse Trump’s infatuation with this COVID-irrelevant drug.

Bright subsequently filed a whistleblower complaint.

I’ve previously speculated that Trump has a financial interest in hydroxychloroquine. But in this case, his interest in claiming to take the drug as a virus prophylactic seems overtly political. The president spends far too much time watching TV. Besides tweeting about this devastating expert eyewitness account of his incompetent handling of the greatest health crisis of the 21st century, Trump outed himself as a presidential guinea pig just to refute Bright.

We know what he thinks of whistleblowers and inspectors general. We doubt that First Fat-Boy would take medications to prove them wrong. My brief history of covering Donald, the real estate delinquent, suggests he hasn’t the courage even to fire apprentices who aren’t hired for the role of losers.

But my outrage is still focused on the mask issue. People demanding reopening of the economy are not wrong to be impatient. I can’t wait to go to my next baseball game or Broadway musical. We’re not close to that yet.

One protester near my old Long Island neighborhood shouted to a TV reporter, “You stopped covering the president’s briefings” in favor of interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci, as if he were the enemy. Truth is, Trump stopped the briefings because advisers told him it wasn’t working for him.

At his next press conference, maybe Trump will say he’s taking Lysol to prevent COVID-19. He’ll blame the virus on Obama, Biden, Hillary, Comey, Mueller—the usual suspects. If you believe him, after all these death-baiting lies, shame on you. Because of the president’s careless disregard for safety in his remarks, focusing on what he calls a political hoax against his re-election, Americans may stop paying attention to necessary precautions.

What I wish for the next presidential event at which masks are required for everyone else is that Trump be required to wear one. If not, Mr. President, you can retire to a virtual appearance off premises. Period.

You never got it, Mr. President. This is NOT and NEVER WAS, about YOU. Almost everyone else gets it. I see it among my neighbors and I’m grateful for their respect to others. When they stop getting it, many more of us will die unnecessarily. It will be on you, Mr. President. Everyone knows you’ve been exposed to the virus. Everyone knows you don’t trust tests or understand anything about a positive or negative one day to the next. You wouldn’t know a vaccine from a vasectomy. Given your massive ignorance and incompetence, wear a damn mask or sequester yourself in front of your TV screens and tweet yourself into virtual oblivion, where you belong..

Steve Parks is a retired New York journalist now living in Easton.

Op-Ed: The Bleaching of Donald Trump by Steve Parks

April 29, 2020 by Steve Parks 4 Comments

First, let me offer a statement on which I hope we can all agree. We want the president to succeed. Moreover, it is not an overstatement to say our lives depend on it. More than 55,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. At current morbidity rates, that toll will be far exceeded by the time you read this.

Yes, we wish the president all the success he can muster. But wishes are very different than expectations. It’s not too much to expect our president to act in a timely and informed manner when facts point to a crisis. Until President Trump’s hand-picked national security adviser, John Bolton, disbanded it, the security team that briefs the president daily included a medical panel whose sole job was to detect emerging epidemics that might spread into an attack far more deadly than even 9/11.

President Obama developed it. Trump dumped it. But, as Donald says, almost bragging, “I take no responsibility.”

It is the primary responsibility in the presidential oath of office to keep all of us safe from harm. President Trump points repeatedly to his China travel restriction on the last day of January as the difference between tens of thousands of U.S. deaths to as many as 2.2 million. Yet more than 40,000 eluded his ban.

In mid-January, when Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar tried to alert his boss to an impending disaster, Trump dismissed him as an “alarmist” and cited lifting restrictions on flavored vaping products, popular with kids, as more urgent.

In February, the president hibernated.

In March and April, he lied about or exaggerated the availability of COVID-19 testing and life-saving medical equipment while refusing to fully invoke the Defense Production Act to fill those gaps. On March 6 at the Center for Disease Control, he falsely claimed, “Anyone that wants a test can get one”—while boasting, “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this stuff.’ Maybe I have a natural ability,” and extolling a “super-genius” uncle who was, in fact (rare for Donald), an MIT professor.

The self-described “stable genius” offered this “I’m-not-a-doctor” medical opinion in an April 23 coronavirus briefing: “I see the disinfectant that knocks [the virus] out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check in on that.”

As usual, Trump had skipped the task force meeting prior to the briefing.

Any of us who’ve raised children recall child-proof locks on cupboards containing bleach and other poisonous cleaning solutions. By the time kids reach a certain age, they figure out locks. But even 10-year-olds know better than to swallow Clorox. Maybe Trump confused Clorox with his previous favorite “cure”—hydroxychloroquine. (Federal and state governments stockpiled 10s of millions of doses of the malaria-and-lupus treatment, making it scarce for those who need it.)

Trump’s spokeswoman and Fox News acolytes said the president was taken out of context—begging the question: In what context is this appropriate? Trump later said he was being sarcastic in a twisted attempt to trick “Fake News” reporters. Anyone who reviews the briefing on video knows he directed his remarks to Dr. Deborah Birx, who feebly said fever might substitute for ultraviolet heat as a treatment.

Here’s the true context for the president’s incomprehensibly stupid and dangerous remarks. Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, cited hundreds of calls by Marylanders who wondered if there was any merit to Trump’s speculation.

None!!!

Grasping at straws for any silver lining, Trump invited to this calamitous briefing William Bryan, acting undersecretary of science, Department of Homeland Security. Bryan, whose background is in infrastructure—not health or science—was the subject of an investigation into whistleblower complaints that he massaged federal policy to benefit himself financially, then lying to Congress about it. The Senate rejected his nomination for a permanent post. At the briefing, acting-so-and-so Bryan said ultraviolet light and disinfectants are useful in killing virus on surfaces—inanimate ones, like your kitchen counter. He then overstretched that legitimate finding by theorizing summer heat and sun rays might kill the virus.

The president immediately leapt to a conclusion he hoped would “trump” Dr. Anthony Fauci’s declaration that COVID-19 will return in the fall—directly disputing Trump’s wishful thinking. (Joe Biden offered this astute advice to his 2020 presidential rival: “Stop thinking out loud.”)

Meanwhile, CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield’s warned that a coronavirus comeback combined with a vigorous flu season would mean a “difficult” fall and winter. Trump set himself up for further rebuttal by declaring that CNN had “totally misquoted” Redfield—actually it was the Washington Post; Trump heard about it on CNN because he’s allergic to reading—the CDC director said unequivocally that he was quoted accurately. Trump glowered, not quite socially distanced, on the podium.

The president faces a November election with an unrelenting pandemic possibly ticking toward 100,000 deaths and an economy that, no matter what “reopening” occurs, will be limping along at an employment rate above 10 percent. Such Trump zealots as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram—but not many Republicans running for re-election—obscenely suggest that Democrats are rooting for high body counts and jobless numbers.

No one wants that. It could be your father or grandfather, your mother or grandmother, sister or brother, wife or husband, even your kid who becomes a grim personal statistic.

We need a leader. Donald Trump, crossing his arms like a grumpy Mr. Clean, is no leader. We wish him the best, expecting the worst. Most of his monotone condolences delivered during pathologically narcissistic briefings are scripted. He’s incapable of authentic empathy. And because he never admits to mistakes—we all make mistakes—he cannot learn from them.

Steve Parks is a retired journalist now living in Easton.

Op-Ed: Earth Day and COVID-19 by Steve Parks

April 15, 2020 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

BY STEVE PARKS

The 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 figured to spark a global outpouring of humanity taking to the streets to demand immediate and even radical action against the existential threat of climate change on life as we know it.

But a pandemic got in the way. So, that’s not going to happen, although we will see a virtual Earth Day across the digital world.

We’re told by authorities to listen to medical science and alter our lives fundamentally by staying home from work, from school and from every activity involving people who don’t live at home with us. Americans with any common sense, most of us, thankfully, are following those recommendations.

Science also tells us we should pay attention to the climatic effects of human activity—essentially burning fossil fuel—by taking profound steps to curb our collective carbon footprint. Staying on our current over-consumptive path inevitably would prove even more globally suicidal than ignoring the dangers of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ironically, the pandemic and worldwide response has resulted in a temporary holiday from the atmospheric march toward carbon suffocation. Skies are clearer today over Los Angeles than they’ve been since long before smog first became a Southern California health threat in the 1940s. Commuting time by car from Long Island to Manhattan is cut in half with no need to resort to HOV lanes. And weekend Bay Bridge traffic, even as spring warms up, say, sometime after April 22, will likely be delay free.

This, of course, is not a sustainable circumstance. Nor does anyone want it to be. But we could achieve, if not free-flowing freeways, air quality similar to the current virus-imposed aberration by switching en masse to electric vehicles. And that’s just one step we could take. I’m sure many of the millions who would’ve been attending in-person Earth Day events have more ideas about how to keep our planet habitable for human beings.

It’s easy to feel discouraged in the face of a presidential administration intent on making air and water dirtier by ordering regulatory freedom for corporations to poison and pollute. But Earth Day isn’t just an excuse for “tree-huggers,” as pollution apologists once labeled friends of the environment, to shout slogans and brandish pickets. The first Earth Day started a movement that led to passage of such landmark laws in the United States as the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species acts. All those are now under threat.

“Despite amazing success and decades of environmental progress, we find ourselves facing an even more dire, almost existential set of global challenges, from loss of biodiversity to climate change to plastic pollution that call for action at all levels of government,” says Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970.

Among the seminal influences that led to the first Earth Day and, in the same year, creation of the Cabinet-level Environmental Protection Agency by the Nixon administration, was the 1962 publication of “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. Documenting the adverse environmental impact of indiscriminate use of pesticides, the book inspired public pressure resulting in the ban of DDT for agricultural purposes. While “Silent Spring” was firmly based on science, it was most popularly known for its opening chapter, which Carson called “a fable for tomorrow.” A composite of true stories, the “fable” illustrated deleterious, sometimes deadly effects of DDT on wildlife, birds, bees, farm animals, pets and humans. It envisioned a spring with no birds to sing and, without bees to pollinate, no flowers to bloom.

Carson’s book also advocated reforms within democratic governments to encourage citizens, individually or in groups, to question what those in power permit others to inject into our environment. She didn’t live to see the far-reaching effects of “Silent Spring.” Carson died of breast cancer in Silver Spring, Md., two years after her book was published.

Now, on the eve of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary, Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, acknowledges, “Progress has slowed, climate change impacts grow and our adversaries become better financed. We find ourselves today in a world facing threats that demand a unified global response. For 2020, we will build a new generation of environmental activists, engaging millions of people worldwide.”

By sheer coincidence, Article 28 of the Paris Agreement on climate change, signed by nearly every nation on Earth (197), the earliest effective date for U.S. withdrawal, announced by President Donald Trump, is the day after the U.S. presidential election. American voters can, for all practical purposes, nullify Trump’s order on Nov. 3.

Meanwhile, you can participate in the first-ever virtual Earth Day here.

Steve Parks is a retired journalist now living in Easton.

Op-Ed: Useless Drivel by Steve Parks

April 7, 2020 by Steve Parks 6 Comments

A lot has changed since my March 17 “Trump Lacks the Leadership Gene” was posted. The day before that Spy op-ed piece appeared, I added a hopeful addendum after the president declared a national emergency on March 13: “As I finished this commentary . . . President Trump suddenly got serious at a press conference, though he later tweeted snarky complaints about two governors and the New York Times. Trump has not yet earned the benefit of our doubt. But let’s hope he rises to the occasion, however belatedly.”

Since then, the president has only sunk deeper in the mire of incompetence and dishonesty regarding his tragic mishandling of the pandemic. Surgeon General Jerome Adams declared on “Meet the Press” that the week between Palm Sunday and Easter “is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment,” echoed by the warning of “really disturbing” days ahead by Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The White House had no scheduled coronavirus task force briefing at the time. But when the president changed his mind following such dire predictions by government medical experts, an important announcement was widely expected.

Instead, we got even more drivel than usual.

In all likelihood, Trump added this last-minute briefing in order to obliviate Joe Biden’s virtual town hall, scheduled for the same hour, 7 p.m. Sunday, with his wife, Jill, a PhD in education.

For three years, many Americans have wondered what would happen if and when Trump faced a real crisis—one not of his own making. Now we know.

Trump has failed America.

Yes, we should all get behind the president in a time of crisis. But now it may be too late to matter. The virus will take its course. All we can do is heed the experts, stay home and pray for the sick, the healers and governors, Maryland’s included, who get what it is to lead in a crisis.

I don’t have a mask. But I’ll wear whatever I can find to cover my face next time I go to the supermarket. My next doctor’s appointment will be via Zoom. Trump can’t even manage to fake support for recommendations by his own team. There’s little attention to social distancing at his briefings. He still refuses to order nationwide shelter-in-place. And he all but mocked the latest recommendation—yes, it was a voluntary one—by declaring he wouldn’t wear a mask, suggesting he’d look silly to visiting potentates. Worse, he belittled science indicating that even assuming perfect compliance with social-distancing, stay-at-home and other prudent precautions, the minimum range of U.S. deaths we can expect is 100,000 to 240,000. That’s what disease models show—to which Trump remarked that he’s not involved in modeling, adding “not that kind of model.” As if this is an appropriate time and place for an off-color joke, which in the context is obscene.

Nor was it the time or place to blast still another governor for complaining about the federal response to pleas for life-saving ventilators and protective medical equipment. “There’s a governor, I hear him complaining all the time. Pritzker [Illinois Gov. Jay Pritzker]. He has not performed well.”

Trump conceded that the country is in for one of the “toughest weeks” yet. But he also called the 1.6 million tests conducted so far in the United States as the most in the world—surpassing Italy or South Korea. As “Morning Joe” Scarborough pointed out, “It’s like saying California did more tests than Delaware.” A day later Trump lied that testing was not the federal government’s responsibility, after weeks of lying that testing was available to “everyone who wants one.” We’ve subsequently learned that Trump was warned by trade adviser Peter Navarro in January that up to a million Americans would die in a pandemic without decisive action.

Trump squandered at least a two-month heads-up.

The president still brags about blocking flights from China, though 40,000 passengers got through anyway, and about hospitals being “thrilled” at supplies they’re receiving from his administration, while his own Health and Human Services report by the department’s inspector general reveals a starkly different reality. Nurses demonstrate outside New York hospitals, holding photos of colleagues killed by the virus. Meanwhile, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, a know-nothing slumlord—just ask his Essex, Md., tenants—claims the national stockpile of vital medical equipment belongs to the federal government, not the states. To prove Kushner right, the “national stockpile” definition was amended on the White House website the next day.

Expect the HHS inspector general to be fired on the heels of the dismissal of the IG who referred the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment. (Yes, the president’s supporters still use that excuse for his viral inattention when the true fault is that he fires almost everyone around him who tells him what he doesn’t want to hear. In any case, he doesn’t read, doesn’t listen.)

But most suspect in his Palm Sunday briefing was the 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine Trump says were added to the stockpile. Based on no credible scientific evidence, he’s relentlessly touted the anti-malarial drug as a possible COVID-19 treatment. Navarro, like Trump a medical amateur, had the temerity to challenge Fauci about the drug’s efficacy in a tense exchange at a task force meeting. When Trump repeated his plug at the briefing, reporters challenged him, to which he spun more out-loud wishful thinking. When Fauci finally appeared at the podium, a CNN reporter pointedly sought his opinion on the drug as a coronavirus treatment. Trump stepped forward before Fauci could speak complaining, “He’s already answered that question 15 times.” Citing more “fake news,” he ended the briefing.

What is it with Trump and hydroxychloroquine? Since he refuses to divulge his tax returns or details about businesses he refused to divest as president, it begs the question: Do the Trumps have a financial interest in this unproven-for-COVID drug?

Steve Parks is a retired New York journalist now living in Easton.

A New Kind of Sunday Service on the Shore by Steve Parks

March 30, 2020 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

Whether or not churches are packed on Easter Sunday or any time soon, people who wish to attend a religious service have a place to go—virtually—right now. Across the country, churches, parishes, synagogues, and mosques are posting live-steam or pre-recorded services, while others are going a bit more low-tech.

It only took a week for streaming services to pop up all over the mid-Shore region, usually via YouTube. As the Rev. Sue Browning, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship at Easton as well as UU of the Chester River in Chestertown, says, “My job as a minister is to stay in close communication with members of our fellowship, especially in times of stress.” Her two UU fellowships were closed as of March 12 due to the coronavirus crisis. “To close was a decision we made on our own,” she says, though, by order of Gov. Larry Hogan, gatherings of more than ten people were banned soon after.

“We only missed one Sunday,” says Browning, who also serves as chair of the Talbot Association of Clergy and Laity. “We were novices when it came to linking our website to YouTube,” which delayed the posting of that first service until 5:30 p.m. Although writing and delivering sermons is only a part of her job, it’s a focal point of each Sunday service. The March 22 streaming debut of UU Easton and Chestertown consisted largely of a hymn performed by Easton UU musical director Ellen Grunden–“Spirit of Life,” chosen in part because most UUs know it by heart—and Browning’s sermon, directed at calming fears at this time of anxiety and isolation.

Other local congregations have made similarly tentative steps into cyberworld. Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Parish, with churches in Easton, St. Michaels, and Cordova, has posted pre-recorded Sunday masses led by Father James Nash in the Easton cathedral. Plans for future dates, including Palm Sunday and Easter, are still up in the air, according to a parish staff member. “But we’ll definitely be doing services online,” she said. “And we expect to add daily masses soon.”

At Easton’s St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, Rev. Ed Kuhling delivered introductory remarks and a sermon that echo-chambered against a soaring stained-glass backdrop. The organ music, however, came across soothingly. Lyrics to hymns were projected on an overhead screen as well as words to responsive readings. The offertory was replaced by a projection indicating where to send checks covering annual pledges in tithes.

These streamings—bound to improve with practice—all resembled in-church services except you couldn’t be there in person. But to “attend,” you didn’t even have to dress.

Temple B’nai Israel got a jump on churches by presenting its Shabbat live stream on March 21, a Saturday, of course, following the start of Sabbath at sundown Friday. Rabbi Peter Hyman presided over what, as the temple’s Satell Center for Jewish Life on the Eastern Shore subtitle implies, is a wider geographical area.

“We should follow instructions on coronavirus. Trust what the experts tell us—politics notwithstanding,” the rabbi said in an online Talbot County Department of Health discussion.

In a Spy interview after the Saturday, March 28, service, Hyman said, “We had 300 viewings of our stream, ten times the number we usually draw in person,” for a congregation of 140 families scattered from the Ocean City area and Delaware to Kent Island. “We’re now looking at this as an opportunity to create a new normal. We will, at some point, resume regular services, but there’s every reason to continue expanding our outreach through technology.”

According to Pastor Tim Poly, his 60-member Royal Oak Community United Methodist Church expanded its audience exponentially to 1,600 globally, once it started streaming on Facebook in addition to YouTube. The church has long had an online presence, including daily devotions and bedtime Bible stories. Its latest is “Church for Kids,” noon Sundays on Zoom, a site that facilitates group interaction.

“Churches everywhere have been losing membership,” Poly says. “Because of the current necessity, we’re breaking out of our traditional four walls. We can’t not continue to do this, once things are back to what once was normal.”

But streaming isn’t the only way to get religion while churches are closed. African-American tradition lends itself to a richly aural experience. The Bethel AME Church in Chestertown and the Bethel AME in Easton, Rev. Wendell Gary presiding, offer 11 a.m. Sunday services delivered by way of conference call-ins. “We’ve set up three worship services a week,” says the Rev. Robert Brown Jr. of Chestertown. Besides the Sunday ritual, these include Monday prayer sessions and Thursday Bible studies.

A pastor’s prime-time is Sunday mornings. But life goes on all week. And especially at this time, loss of life can be inconsolable to survivors. “We had a death in the congregation,” says Browning. “It had nothing to do with coronavirus, but the disease had everything to do with how loved ones could mourn the passing. It changes everything about what we do as ministers, friends, or family. You can’t even offer hugs.” Besides spoken or written condolences, she says, “The best we can do for now is a memorial service after all this passes.”

As for weddings, she says, “I haven’t had one come up during this time, but I understand most venues and vendors have been very forgiving about postponements.”

In such cases, virtual ceremonies can’t replace the old normal.

See the guide to virtual church services here.

Steve Parks is a retired journalist now living in Easton.

The Spy Streaming Guide–What to Watch

March 25, 2020 by Steve Parks Leave a Comment

TV, of course, is always a home-entertainment source—at times unreliably so. But some of us who may be tech-challenged—under the age of 35 or so—probably haven’t taken full advantage of the burgeoning roster of excellent programming outside network and cable fare.

It’s time to catch up, especially now. None of us knows when next we can get out to catch a movie, concert, play, or musical at a local or out-of-town theater. If you’re already streaming savvy, skip the next part and go on to selected recommendations.

There are so many shows—miniseries, documentaries, and ongoing series running several seasons that we could not scratch the surface here. Certainly, I haven’t seen them all. I don’t think anyone has that much time on their hands—even now, as we’re mostly housebound. But all you need is a laptop or smartphone with decent sound quality. If not, then figure out how to run it through your TV. Or, easier still, invest in the modest cost of a streaming device, such as Roku, connecting to your flatscreen. That way, you can plug into such repositories as Netflix, which offers as many fine movies and other programming as HBO, for instance.

Here are three wide-ranging choices I recommend:

HILLARY, a four-part documentary available on Hulu

I know. Hillary. She’s so last election cycle. But considering she’d be president today, except for her electoral college loss to Donald Trump as she won the popular vote by nearly 3 million, there’s something very much current events about this up-close and unusually personal look at Hillary Clinton, from schoolgirl to the only woman ever nominated by a major party to be president of the United States. Never mind that she was probably the most famous woman in the United States for 30 years, she’s remained an enigma. It’s about time, some would say long past time, that we got to know her. One critic wrote that the documentary comes both too soon and too late.

Too soon, of course, because how much Hillary can you take? But it’s not just Hillary. For 20 years, we had no one in the White House besides a Bush or a Clinton. Even though an eight-year Obama hiatus, there was Hillary, first as secretary of state, then U.S. senator from New York and finally, inevitably, presidential candidate Clinton II.

The “too late” part goes almost without saying. But one of her supporters says it out loud, suggesting in this documentary astutely created by filmmaker Nanette Burstein that if “Hilary” had come out before the election, “we would’ve won.”

But the here-and-now in the documentary is hard to miss.

Of Bernie Sanders, running again for president long after his past-expiration date, Hillary said: “Honestly, Bernie just drove me crazy… Nobody likes him; nobody wants to work with him; he got nothing done. He was a career politician — he did not work until he was, like, 41 and got elected to something. It was all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”

OK, tell us what you really think.

Then there are the separate, never more personal, recollections of the roughest patch of any marriage of a president and first lady. (Bill: “It was awful, what I did.” Hillary: “I was so angry.”)

But their anguished looks and mannerisms say more than any words possibly could. Or any impeachment. The anguish, however, appears even greater among Clinton loyalists grieving on the night of her defeat. How is it, they ask, that Hillary paid more for her husband’s sexual indiscretions than Trump did for his?

It can’t just be about the emails. Misogyny played a more significant part than most anybody, but Hillary knows. She doesn’t use that as her excuse. “There are a thousand reasons,” she says, any one of which…

Recommended reading: “Hillary Rodham Clinton: Hard Choices,” a memoir.

THE HANDMAID’S TALE, now in season 4 on Netflix

In the Republic of Gilead, harrowingly depicted in Margaret Atwood’s novel, women of child-bearing age are consigned to the role of servile surrogate breeders. They give birth, but they are not allowed to be mothers. As instructed by Aunt Lydia, terrifyingly played in the Netflix series by Ann Dowd, this will become the young women’s new normal. Among them is Offred, played by Elisabeth Moss, with the plucky resolve of a survivor who hasn’t yet surrendered all notions of self-worth.

Over the course of three seasons, she matriculates through a curriculum that leads her from victimization to resistance. It’s a dangerous path. Those who are caught defying the reproductive order of the republic are punished in the most public and primitive way. Enemies of the state are put to death in the Old Testament way—stoning. And just in case any of the breeder witnesses to the execution miss the point, the condemned sometimes have their hands hacked off, so they have no means to deflect the rocks hurled at them.

Seasons three and four run deep into the resistance phase of this engrossing and evolving series. But all four are still available for “Handmaid’s Tale” virgins, so to speak.

Recommended reading: Atwood’s novel of the same title, of course.

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA, a miniseries on HBO pay cable or HBO Go streaming service

The year is 1940, and American hero Charles Lindbergh, the first human ever to cross the Atlantic solo in the air, is running for president against FDR. He’s a novice. No government experience whatsoever and a celebrity that cloaks his dark, anti-Semitic side. Fueled by the wealth and influence of fellow bigot Henry Ford, Lindy, in the 2004 Philip Roth re-imagining of 20^th-century American history, defeats Roosevelt in a stunning upset. Taking their cue from the unbridled new president, Americans suddenly feel free to express racist and ethnic revulsion to “others,” not from their neighborhoods. It’s a slow-destabilizing rot on the soul of America as envisioned in Roth’s late masterpiece.

Here, David Simon, with his writing partner Ed Burns, creates a Newark, New Jersey, as realistic as the Baltimore they co-created in “The Wire,” widely regarded as a television masterpiece. Each member of this Jewish family reacts in starkly different ways to the new threat from within, rising on the heels of the defeat of Hitler.

Full disclosure: Simon is a colleague from my days as an editor at the Baltimore Sun, where he gathered first-hand material for his “Homicide” series on NBC and “The Wire,” and earlier as editor-in-chief of the University of Maryland daily paper, The Diamondback, a few years after me. He grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Silver Spring. So, the Newark neighborhood of Roth’s memory is not so distant from Simon’s. He brings it to chilling realism in this miniseries that runs every Monday night through April 20. You can still catch the first installment before Monday on HBO or anytime on HBO Go video on demand.

It could be Lindy’s America, just as this one has become Trump’—so far—because we’ve we let it. The parallels are unmistakable even without political finger-pointing. That would turn “Plot” into propaganda rather than drama. Simon and Burns know drama whenever they latch on to it.

Recommended reading: “The Plot Against America,” a novel by Philip Roth

Steve Parks is a former New York arts critic, writer, and editor now living in Easton.

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