Thoughts – Page 2 – Dennis C Merritt

Libertarians vs. Progressives

Our local paper, the Greenfield Recorder, had recently published an op-ed piece advocating a libertarian approach to the pandemic. This was my op-ed published a short while after.

It was refreshing to read John Blasiak’s My Turn a while back, and to see all the dialog he stirred up. It advocated, as many probably know, a pure Libertarian approach to the problem. The Libertarians stress individual responsibility and rights with minimal government intervention. (Like they don’t want the government telling them whether or not they can use marijuana, have an abortion, or own a gun.) They harken back to thoughts such as those expressed in our own Emerson’s essay on Self Reliance.

Here’s what I really like about Libertarians — they are genuinely interested in what they believe is best for the people of this country. You might argue with their vision, but their concern is the best life for the individuals in our country.

The Recorder has a lot of My Turn essays supporting a Progressive agenda. Universal health care, college education for all, things like that.

Here’s what I really like about Progressives — they are genuinely interested in what they believe is best for the people of this country. You might argue with their vision, but their concern is the best life for the individuals in our country.

Both groups want a government by the people, for the people. Not one bought and sold by the interests of the super rich.

You know what I don’t like about the Republicans and the Democrats? Ideally they might echo Libertarian or Progressives views, but they don’t. Both parties are dependent on the wealthy donors who support their elections. We are where we are today through a sequence of alternating Democrat and Republican administrations that serve those donors.

Consider health care. Millions are winding up uninsured as they lose their jobs during this pandemic. Why? Even though we elected a president, Obama, in large part because he promised to fix health care, and even though the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, we’re still stuck with the big business of group insurance and the world’s most lucrative, for the health providers, medical system in the world.

Obama recognized the value in either a Libertarian or Progressive approach. He didn’t care if we went to individual free market insurance (Libertarian where everyone buys their own in a free market, like we do with say car insurance) or nationalized health (Progressive like maybe Medicare for all). Either would be better. But of course, Congress didn’t do either and instead got the health insurance lobbyists to write up legislation that sort of promised the insurance companies wouldn’t be as cruel as they used to be, but they’d still be in charge, and still make plenty of money with which to fund elections.

Note that a laid off individual today would still have their insurance if they had bought their own individual insurance (Libertarian) or were covered by government insurance (Progressive).

I would love to see a Congress filled with Libertarians and Progressives, debating the best way to run our government, reaching compromises based on competing views of what is best for the people. Without their main priority being who will fund their next election.

Ranked choice voting can take us there. Make it OK to have Libertarian and Progressive candidates. To hear their voices in the debates (neither Gary Johnson, Libertarian, or Bernie Sanders, Progressive, were heard in the last presidential debates). To be able to freely vote for either without feeling as if the vote was “wasted.”

Represent Us is one organization fighting for ranked choice voting.

Generational Differences

As I talk with my grandkids, I note the key disconnect between generations. Not just ours, but probably all since time began.

I’ve been 20, and I’ve had kids who were, and now grandkids. And I’ve read some history. From that point of view it’s easy to see the general pattern of 20 year olds reacting to the world they find themselves in.

It’s a perspective the 20 year old can’t possibly have, and it leads us, the elders to a sort of smug condescending sort of attitude.

But the world this crop of 20 year olds is entering isn’t at all like that of their parents, or grandparents. This is true for every generation, but in our particular case we, the elders, know nothing about the social norms of today, the problems with dating, the difficulty with getting an education, the dismal job prospects, the anger over the environment, etc. etc.

In other words, from the 20 year old’s perspective, we simply don’t get it. They’re right, and our blindness to the current world pisses them off.

So there’s the basis of the conflict. The elders see the larger patterns that the youth can’t see, and the youth see the realities of the day that the elders can’t see.

We, the elders, understand well the pattern of angry young men. But we haven’t a clue as to what it is that makes them angry today.

Millennials and Boomers

Being one of the first Boomers, born in February of 1946, I do tend to bristle a bit at the critiques of my generation. Like how we don’t get white privilege, we’ve let climate change destroy the planet, we’re complicit in huge economic disparity, etc. etc.

Well, OK, that’s all true. But look at the world we came of age in–nobody had to explain white privilege, blacks were getting lynched, couldn’t ride on buses, had to pee in the one filthy ‘colored’ rest room at the back of the gas station, women couldn’t hold a fraction of the jobs they can now, and when they did at a fraction of the salary, you couldn’t breath the air around cities, you couldn’t swim in the rivers or drink the water, and American imperialism was at its worst.

The Boomers ended the Viet Nam war (which was started by a Democrat, by the way), started Earth Day and the EPA (put in during a Republican administration — these issues have nothing to do with the two-party system), got Civil Rights legislation passed, integrated our society, and started the Feminist movement.

(On a personal note, I used to bike to work in Boston, and when I started doing that I could hardly breath when I got there. Just a few years after the EPA, the air was clear on my commute.)

But, was it the Boomers? I don’t think so. It was young people. We were in our 20s, we saw the world our complacent and clueless parent’s generation was trying to tell us was just fine. And it wasn’t. And they didn’t get it. So we rose up and became the change we wanted.

Our rallying cry: “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”

But wait, our parent’s generation? Weren’t they “The Greatest Generation?” How could this be? They were the ones who saw a world under threat of dictatorial fascism, coming at us from both our East and our West. They were the ones who survived the Great Depression brought on them by Capitalism run amok. Them? The problem?

It wasn’t actually the generation label that was key. It was their age. They were 20 year olds. 20 years olds who saw the world was in trouble, who lied about their age to get into the War, who if not fighting made rivets to support the War, who risked their lives so no one had to submit to the tyrannical rulers literally trying to take over the world.

And then they came home, and enjoyed the economic benefits, and got complacent in their life styles, and turned blind eyes to the injustices around them. And had kids who, well, that goes back to the beginning of this essay.

I look at the world today, and so much is wrong with it. But I’m OK, I’ve got my house, my retirement, health insurance (Medicare)… yes, complacent. Yet I see and hear the Millennials, and how angry they are, how they can’t own a house, can’t get a job, can’t get health insurance, to say nothing of watching the environment go to hell and politicians continue to support the 1%.

I say go for it. The world desperately needs a dose of fired up young people. They’ve changed the world before and I believe they’re going to do it again. I for one am kind of excited.

The times, they are a-changing. (our music was better)(Dylan was 23 when he wrote that song)

General note on generational differences.

Covid-19 and Anger

Various healers through the ages have looked at the links between underlying emotions, or maybe Karma, or maybe God, and the trials people suffer.

It’s in the Old Testament, Eastern religions, 1800s authors (See the Scarlet Letter or Moby Dick) etc. I don’t want to make a case for or against the idea here, but rather, just for a moment, look at what seems a Twilight Zone moment happening right now.

One aspect of the idea is that symptoms of a disease express the emotions underlying the disease. I’ve heard of a number of these links but the one that rattles around in my head is this:

Anger manifests itself as a cough.

And here is Covid-19 spreading through the world, and all the news for the years leading up to that have been about how angry and divided people are. In this country, but in the world as well.

Populist leaders rising to power riding the anger of people who feel they have been ignored and betrayed by those traditionally in power.

And then a backlash of anger from those who hate the populist, often authoritarian, leaders.

Judging by my FaceBook feed, there are a lot of people just boiling over with anger at Trump. Who continues to be popular amongst all those who are furious at the liberals ruining our country with their hypocritical self-serving policies.

Maybe Anger is the Pandemic, and Covid-19 the symptom. Maybe, yes we need to wash our hands, but also, maybe start to try to figure out how to dial back the divisive anger pervading our country and the world as well.

Tales of a Dance Monarch

The issue of complaints among dancers is a difficult one. Having been involved in running a number of dances for a number of years, I’ve decided to document some of the cases I’ve dealt with in an attempt to illustrate the complexity of the issue.

A was a, maybe 30ish, dancer who could best be described as extremely arrogant. He had a way about him that put a lot of people off, and a strong lead that some women didn’t like. He also had friends in the dance community who did like him. Nobody thought him a sexual predator, but some women would not dance in a line with him.

This was a dance where we had decided to have three people talk to a problem dancer. We did. He simply got defensive, said nobody complained to him. He continued to dance the way he did and eventually stopped coming because I think we pissed him off.

I was invited to join the board in part because I was sympathetic to some of the issues of the young lady dancers and the problems they were encountering with unwelcome advances from older men. This led to a period in the dance where announcements were made targetting creepy old guys, with statements like “if she’s young enough to be your daughter, treat her like your daughter.”

The net result of this was the announcements, instead of painting a picture of a welcoming fun event, painted a picture of a viper’s nest of sexual predators. Not sure that’s what we wanted to do.

There were announcements made to counter the then ethic of always accepting dance invitations. You didn’t have to say yes to someone who creeped you out.

This era was more complex than it might seem. Were there more creepy old men then? Well there certainly were some who loved to dance with young girls and maybe closer than they should. But I would say the majority of men simply liked to dance with dancers of all ages and enjoyed the cross-generational contact that is often so missing from our culture.

I spent a fair amount of time talking to various young women at the dance to get a sense of their feelings on the issue. Again, yes there were some bad apples, but mostly these young dancers wanted to dance with just their young friends and didn’t like it when people of their parent’s generation would ask them to dance.

One young lady told me the biggest problem she had with the dance was that there were so many people who thought they could dance in “their” line. She didn’t even want to encounter people not in their clique as neighbors, let alone men from a different generation.

I had the sense that maybe the dance powers of that era were played into villifying older (and I mean over 30) men to allow a very active and dynamic young clique to stayed closed to outsiders.

It’s still more complicated — that young clique got a lot of criticism from the elders, but everything we said dance should be, a community, a place of mutal support, a welcoming place, etc. etc. was true in spades for these young dancers. That community they had, within the larger community, did everything one would want a dance community to do. Some said they didn’t think they would have survived those turbulent early years of life without the support of that young community.

The school we danced at received a lot of complaints from freshmen who attended the introductory dance. The school had a committee of people designated and trained to handle these sorts of issues. We had a meeting. (I was the only man in attendence.)

There were five catgories of complaints registered against the dancers at our dance. Four of those complaints could have occurred at any event where men and women were together. Unwelcome compliments, attempts to get someone to leave the dance with them, and in general all those situations where a man might hit on a woman and the clueless ones don’t pick up on the cues that his overtures are unwelcome.

These things could happen at work or a church social. It’s about men and women trying to balance the normal activities of life with underlying hormonal urges.

One of the five categories was dance specific. Men holding the women closer than they felt comfortable with. This could be something we could address. But again, it’s complicated, this was also an era where grinding was common at the dance and lots of couples enjoyed close physical touch during the swings.

We spent a lot of time teaching women how to assert their space by holding a dance frame at the distance they want. Left hand placed on shoulder in a way that it can push out. This lets the woman be in charge of the distance. I taught that when I was teaching.

Then I had a very educational experience — I sometimes enjoyed what was then called the lady’s role. There was a guy, bigger and stronger than me, who I wound up having to swing with mulitple times in a dance with a shadow swing. He went all faux gay on me, saying how glad he was to have this chance and pulling me close, stroked my back, and, well he was joking, but I didn’t enjoy it, and even seeing it coming, wasn’t able to use a dance frame to keep him away. (He was a dancer women complained about as well.)

It was embarrassing to me and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Hmmm, this is way more difficult than it seems.

I had another man try to pull me close after that, but I saw it coming and used a dance frame that was almost a straight arm to hold him away. He got really mad at me and said that’s how he dances with everyone and how dare I push him away. That’s how I should expect to be swung. (He was a dancer women complained about as well.)

About the meetings with the school, well they were very frustrating. I kept asking the experienced people at the school what steps they recommended we should take, and they were always cut off by our board members who instead wanted to describe the steps we were already taking. It was more as if the board members were trying to defend how they did things rather than learn how to more effectively deal with these issues.

The two men I mentioned above were both considered problematic for many women as well. Neither was really a sexual predator, although one was single and, like many people at the dance, enjoyed it as a place to connect with members of the opposite sex. But he was respectful and straight forward, just, well, an asshole.

There are a number of people at the dance who are socially awkward. There was one in particular who did tremendous good work for the dance but who simply rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. He probably had something wired the wrong way. He made the famous comment that everyone at the dance is socially awkward, and that’s what’s so wonderful about the contra community. You don’t have to be cool to be welcome in it.

E was an individual who definitely did have some mental problems. There were difficulties with dancing with him, there were behaviors that were difficult, but everyone in the community knew him and accepted him. Most of the women were happy to give him a dance in an evening.

On bad nights, people would just shake their heads and say E is off his meds tonight. So, maybe a wonderful story about and open and accepting dance community, but not such a good experience for a new comer at the dance.

I used to drive E home after dances. He told me about his meds, he said people want him on the meds, and, well he does it, but he doesn’t like it. He can feel the real him inside and he hates that the meds repress who he really is. If people can’t deal with the real him, well that’s their problem.

He wound up getting in an altercation with another of the problem dancers mentioned above, and we never saw him again. I tried to find him and see how he was, but was never able to.

F was a guy who showed up and waited for the new young dancers. He would hold them close, telling them that’s how a swing is done. I was surprised a number of times to run into him and his current new young partner in line, and have the woman (really girl) sink into my arms as if she thought that’s how you’re supposed to do it. I wound up trying to show them the dance frame.

There weren’t many complaints about F, because most ladies didn’t want to dance with him. He always found the newcomers. Many didn’t come back.

This seemed a problem so I talked to him. The problem persisted. I talked to him again. He explained that the women liked dancing with him that way.

He’s one of two people I asked not to come back to the dance anymore. (I was the monarch at that dance.) He didn’t have many friends in the dance community, there was no sense of loss.

G was a guy that was only occasionally at our dances, but someone who danced a lot in the larger dance community, weekends, etc. married to another, really nice, active dancing lady. They had kids and would sometimes trade who went to the dance and who stayed home.

He was a strong dancer and liked to dip whoever he was swinging. He did it in a forceful way, and, while maybe 30 or so, he liked dancing in the “young” line and dipping the young ladies.

A number of the older women in the dance community were offended by his behavior and made a very strong case that he should be banned from the dance. He seemed a nice enough guy, so I decided to watch him dance.

Indeed, he was in the “young” line, and indeed he dipped almost every neighbor lady. But they all came up smiling, they all seemed to really enjoy his dance moves.

I explained this to the women who thought he should be banned, the ones who didn’t like him. I asked them to tell me of a dancer who had a problem with him. They found one lady. I talked to her. Yes, he had dipped her when she didn’t want to be dipped. I asked if she said anything. She said yes, she asked him not to do that. I asked what happened then. She said he never dipped her again.

Despite a lot of pressure, I didn’t ban him.

H was maybe the nicest guy you would ever want to meet. But he was physically awkward and was a strong, not always in time, lead. Some women complained that he hurt them while trying to lead them where he thought they should go.

We’re not talking holding close or anything, just putting pressure on hands and arms that was uncomfortable.

I got complaints about him.

I talked to him, and said women say you are hurting them. Well here’s what happens almost all the time. He got very defensive and said nobody ever mentioned it to him. Right away we were in an antagonistic configuration.

Well time passed, and the issue persisted. One difference, I had learned a little bit about non-violent communication (NVC) which is maybe a misleading name. It might better be called non-judgemental communication. It’s based on 4 steps:

1- non judgemental observation

2- expression of how that makes you feel

3- express a personal need

4- make a request

Armed with this I approached H another time.

H, I said, (1) a number of women have come to me saying they feel you’ve hurt them while dancing. (Not the accusatory, you hurt them.) (2) this makes me feel bad since I don’t like it when people aren’t enjoying the dance. (3) I need to run a dance where the dancers feel comfortable. (4) Can you please work on using a lighter touch when you dance so I don’t get these complaints?

The effect was amazing. He thanked me for pointing it out and changed his behavior.

J was, at least for me, one of the most interesting cases. He was old, very intelligent, and with a personal history of great ups and downs. Many people, including myself, who knew him really liked him.

But he did like to get close to the ladies. And here’s how various women reacted to him. Either evil or as a harmless old man.

A young woman, a sensitive gentle woman, new to our community and staying at our house was watching some dance videos I had. She was suddenly visibly upset seeing J in the video, saying that’s the man who ruined her early dance experiences. She was clearly very damaged by whatever interaction she had had with him. Yes, a bad dance experience can have lasting effect.

Wow. So I asked a lot of other women about him. One was another young dancer, a vivacious sort of lady and I asked if J bothered her with his hands, his grabbing. She just threw it off, saying “nah, that’s just J.”

Amazing, two different young ladies with completely different reactions.

What about the older (again I mean over 30 but also into their 60s) women? One was my partner in a dance. She went over to some neighbor interaction with J, and came back shaking her head and laughing, “J always figures out some way to cop a sneak feel.”

Another said she enjoyed grinding with him, but hated some other strange gesture he had and asked him to not do that. He stopped that and they continued to happily grind away.

I didn’t really have many direct complaints about J. As with E, it was as if he was a likable old guy with some strange behaviors that didn’t stop a lot of the women from giving him a dance in an evening.

But, like with F, he would sometimes go after the new young ladies. I watched him hold this young girl close, squeezing her breasts tightly against him. I asked the girl afterwards if she was comfortable with that. Well I’m like her grandfather, and so is J, and she couldn’t have been more than 20, and well what do you say? She didn’t know, she thought that’s maybe how you’re supposed to do it. She was clearly uncomfortable both with J’s dancing and my asking her how she felt about J’s dancing.

She didn’t come back.

I told J he couldn’t come back either. (Although I’m told he’s reformed and dancing again.)

Having left the dance community, I’ve heard of two dancers who have been asked to leave the dances. Both were long time members of the dance community. Both have personalities that some people like and others don’t.

Both feel as if they’ve been thrown out with no good cause and no good explanation and no good process.

Ironically, Y was one of the people who enforced the ban on X, and who, according to X, didn’t offer due process or explanation just as Y complains now.

I am in no position to judge what happened, but things are so complex and I noticed two really interesting examples where supposedly factual incidents were flipped from what they first appeared.

In one Y complained that there was no process or procedure used for “alleged” complaints in one dance. Well it turns out, there were, and he ignored them.

In another, someone complained about Y hurting them. Well it turns out, maybe, who knows really, that she was hurting him and wouldn’t stop.

This stuff just isn’t that easy.

Well, I know nothing of these two cases, but do have a fear that people might get banned because they’re assholes, or rub people the wrong way. As that one time dancer said, what’s wonderful about contra is you don’t have to be cool to be welcomed.

What if they’re sexual predators driving young dancers away? Well probably should be banned then.

What if they’re personalities that simply piss people off? (Two dancers back in the day famously almost got into a fist fight arguing about how a dance should be run.) Well maybe that should just be people working things out without the need of a higher dance organization stepping in.

There is no Z, but there will be. I tend to think this is not a problem that dance organizers can easily address.

Today I see the dance more like an arena, a place where men and women come together to enjoy an activity which has wonderful music, great dancing, and a constant interaction between all the men and women in the hall. It’s not like you can just dance with your favorite partner all night, or a few select friends.

It’s a learning experience for all of us, learning how to deal with all the dancers coming down the line at you. And there will be mistakes, and people not as good at it as others. And people that really like each other and wind up being couples for life, and people who become good friends and meet and socialize outside of the dance, and people who just piss each other off. Except those people also have friends, and maybe lovers in the community as well.

How much control should the organizers try to exert over the behavior of the men and women acting like men and women at the dance?

I think a lot of it just has to be left up to the dancers. And the truth be known, the dance won’t be for everyone. Some will thrive in the community, others won’t. People will learn who they feel safe dancing with, and also which lines to avoid. Like the one with your ex in it, or that asshole you can’t stand.

But the predators waiting for the new young dancers…. Well that’s where I would draw the line.

Hire the Astrologically Handicapped

I always thought that would be a good bumper sticker, as I feel the pain of my own astrological handicap.

I’m a Pisces, the last of the signs, the sign that sees everything as shades of grey, the signs that always see the other side, and, as one joke horoscope said, the only sign that believes this BS.

I live in a world, a country rather, where it’s all about advocacy, taking a stand. And I keep making posts about seeing the other side, and keep getting hammered.

Sigh.

Japan might be better for me. When I learned a little Japanese I learned there is a construct in their language that they use all the time, that doesn’t have a simple translation. You’ll often hear a Japanese person use the closest English: “on the other hand…”

And they tend to prefer mediators over lawyers.

Keeping Score

I’m thinking keeping score takes the fun out of most games and sports.

Take golf. It’s fun to walk around the course, it’s really neat that you can make the ball go so far, sometimes it lands where you want, sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s simply a fun activity.

Until you keep score. You might have a streak of good holes, and then you get a bad one, and your score is ruined and your day is ruined.

I like doing crosswords. They have them online. And when you do them online, they time you. It becomes a race. The whole fun of crosswords is the word play, sussing out what the creator was thinking. But with the clock ticking? And then being told at the end how long it took?

The score doesn’t measure the enjoyment of the activity, yet it becomes how the activity is rated. How’d you do at golf today? What was your score, like that tells it all. And for some, it does.

Did you enjoy that crossword online? Well judging by your time, apparently not. But if it took longer it would have been more challenging, more fun. But if you’re timing them, you want them easy so you can get a low time.

I’m discouraged by the reports about the women’s soccer team. They are “winners.” It’s all about winning. It’s all about having a score higher than the other teams. And if it’s not higher? Well then it’s a disaster, the joy is taken out of it.

The competition, the play means nothing. Just the final score.

Winning is everything? I used to race bicycles in the Boston area back in the mid 1970s when the sport was really small. We had a weekly race I really enjoyed. I consistently finished in the top five, but never won.

What a pleasure to race against the better riders in the area.

One weekend there was a big race in Canada and all the good riders, as it turned out, all the riders better than me, went. I didn’t, so in the local race, I was the best rider. I went off the front by myself. I won easily. It was boring.

In the Olympics, did you get a medal? Was it gold? If not, what was the point?

So You Think You Can Dance. Is it about the joy of movement? No, it’s about what the judges think. If they like you, it was a great experience, if not, well a disaster. Yet the dance, the moves are the same in either case.

And I guess this is the complaint about standardized testing is school. Did the kids learning anything? Did they enjoy the experience of learning? Doesn’t matter, what was the score?

I’m really hoping I get a lot of likes on this one…

Diversity & Contra

I can’t imagine a more open and accepting group of people than those in the contra dance community. At any contra dance there are young people and old, rich and poor, conservative and liberal, blue collar and white collar, all sorts of different people from different walks of life.

And almost all of Northern European descent. It’s rare to see anyone of African descent, or Latin American, or Asian, or even Southern European.

Is this a non-welcoming community then? Are we in contra not as open as we like to think?

I don’t think so. Even the Republicans in the contra community have a lot of ‘Snow Flake’ in them.

I think it’s the music. A music that resonates with our shared cultural roots. A music that speaks to us at a level deep below the diversity-loving part of us that yearns for a society that is fair and equitable for all.

We’d love to see all those other cultures at our dances. We’d love to interact with them, share a do-si-do down the line, a smile, eye contact, talk during the break, get to know and understand each other. But I just don’t think the music speaks to them like it does to us.

Them and us.

This is a problem in a country as culturally diverse as ours. It’s what we wrestle with, trying to establish the boundaries, the interconnections, the ways to preserve one culture while still being able to live and work in harmony with others.

E.B. White understood all of this in 1949. Here’s his essay on how all the myriad cultures in New York get along each day. And the dangers that lurked ahead.

Quotes from This is New York by E.B. White

The full essay, but definitely a book that should be bought as well.

Women Characters in Fiction

I read an article a while back, where a woman author was making the claim that a man couldn’t write a character who was a woman. This was similar to other comments I’d seen about writing characters of a particular race, or culture.

I didn’t think too much about it until I’d seen another thread where women authors were making fun of a young man who, to prove that a man can write a realistic woman, gave a sample of his writing about a woman and how and why she wriggled into her oh-so-tight jeans. Seems he wound up proving the opposite.

This led a man on the thread to challenge the women to describe themselves as a man might. The results were sometimes funny, sometimes sad.

The funny answers included bits like: “Her breasts entered the room before her…”. The sad ones didn’t write anything, instead noting that no man would include a woman like herself in a book.

I first took serious note of this idea while listening to an audio book of “The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins. The story is told in first person through three different women characters.

I was surprised by the depth and complexity of those women. The nuances of the descriptions, the insights into the women’s thoughts and feelings, well, had I been writing it they would have never occurred to me. (Full disclosure — I’m a man.)

I’m not sure I can even describe it well, still being trapped in my male mindset, but it was the smooth co-existence of various thoughts and feelings that stuck out for me. For example, I could see myself writing a professional, competent woman character (I’ve known plenty to use as role models). Or I could see myself writing a flirtatious captivating woman character (I’ve known them as well).

But I would never think to meld the two ideas as seamlessly as Paula Hawkins did. In one scene, the main character is going to talk to the investigating detective at the police station, very serious, very focused on what she wants to accomplish, and as she’s walking through the offices, notes the men that have taken notice of her looks, the one she cultivated with her choice of clothing.

The flirtatious and the serious both there, intertwined, yet without either affecting the other. Like two different threads going on in her mind at the same time. It would have never occurred to me to capture the complexity of her mind like that. And it was jarring, for me, to read it.

After listening to the audio book (on a long road trip) I was curious if the movie captured those nuances. It didn’t.

Maybe it’s simply too hard to portray psychological insights in film? Or maybe it’s that, despite a woman-authored screenplay, the male directors thought it better to focus on the action of the plot.

And what about the men in the book? Well they are shallow, almost caricatures of men. I was a bit offended, we’re not like that.

Most recently, I’ve been enjoying the TV series, “Scott & Bailey.” The primary characters are women detectives, and the show was written by women. And directed.

Just as in “The Girl on the Train,” the complexity and depth of the lead women make this show stand out.

The main characters are talented, focused, professional women detectives. But they are also women with relationships, and ups and downs with mates and lovers and children and parents. Yet the two are intertwined in a way that I just don’t think a man would write.

It’s popular today to have male detectives that have home issues to deal with as well. But the two are more cleanly separated. The detective is fighting the bad guy, then worrying about his kid, then solving, then worrying. Neither gets in the way of the other, it’s like two separate stories, until the bad guys kidnap his kid.

Not so with the women of Scott and Bailey, who have a fascinating blend of strength and weakness, of being vulnerable and fully in charge, of being professional and flirtatious, all seamlessly, realistically intertwined.

Scott and Bailey get the bad guys using their analytical intelligence, figuring out exactly what went on in the crimes and who was lying about what. They often solve the case through their ability to use psychological insights to get suspects to crack under interrogation.

Contrast this to man-oriented detectives who often have to have physical combat with the bad guys, and run around with guns blazing, and, even in interview rooms, have to deal with people jumping over tables and trying to fight.

I’ve often had what is probably an unpopular idea, and that is that men and women are equally matched gladiators in the battle of sexes, but where each is given different weapons.

Men are armed with fists that do physical harm, and women are armed with psychological insights that do emotional harm.

Scott and Bailey use their weapons as effectively as Dirty Harry uses his gun.

And the men in Scott and Bailey? They’re all shallowly drawn caricatures of men. Their cluelessness enters the room before them.

Seeing the reality of the Scott & Bailey characters gives a different insight into other detective/thriller type movies with strong women characters written by men.

Those women are to be admired because of their no-nonsense self-confidence, their easy banter with their colleagues, their courage and coolness under fire, and, often most important of all, their martial arts ability.

And when they do discuss their feelings, it might be like this dialog I recently heard — He asked, “do you know what it’s like to have someone you care for die?” “Yes, “ she said stoically, “I had a comrade die in battle.”

In other words, they’re just male characters being acted out by women. And not just any women, but beautiful young women.

I suspect this difficulty of creating characters of the opposite gender is part of a larger issue. No author can create a realistic character that doesn’t resonate with his or her gut. But maybe this isn’t really a problem.

What an author can do is accurately portray his or her impressions of, a woman, a man, a black, a Muslim, a Southerner, a… And for those readers with a similar world view, the author’s work will be entertaining.

I just wish someone would get computer geeks right for a change.

Horror, Nazis, Fragrance

I remember reading a while back a fictionalized account of some Austrian town during the Nazi occupation. It was based on real events.

The main character was a young boy who had watched his parents get murdered in the street. There was a secret group of Jewish leaders in the town who did their best to survive, to make sure, in this case, the boy survived in the face of the horror of that genocidal occupation.

The story expressed that horror as best words could.

Shortly thereafter I was reading an article in a paper about an issue in a wealthy suburb of Boston. It turns out there were people who attended town meetings wearing too much fragranace, and that offended others.

The anger, the vitriol, the expressions of horror at this were every bit as strong as the expressions of horror in that Austrian village. The outrage, the call to arms, the fight, the struggle to get a town meeting where fragrances were banned…

Will Shortz, the NY Times puzzle geek, recently published a puzzle with a clue about a baseball being thrown at the head, and the answer was beaner, a variation of bean ball. Turns out he didn’t know beaner was a derogatory word for Hispanics.

Social media exploded with vitriol, the anger, the downright hatred aimed at this man for including that answer. How it symbolized everything that was wrong in this racist society, how intolerable it was that people like him did the things that they did.

It was no different from the horror and anger I remember reading about after the torture and murder of the young Emmett Till.