D.S.A.

 

California, Oregon, Nevada, Kansas, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, Colorado, Minnesota, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington, Florida, Arizona, New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama, Nebraska, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Missouri, New Jersey, Utah, South Carolina, New Mexico. Iowa. 

 

What does this list of 30 states mean? Naturally, you’re looking for some political pattern. And if you did so, you’d discover the shameful truth that the majority of them chose to re-install the worst President this country— or virtually any country— has ever known. And even though you know that good people live in each of those states, it’s hard not to curse these places for their choice. 

 

But in fact, this is a list of places I’ve had memorable and marvelous four-day visits to in the form of the annual Orff Conference. And today I’m boarding a plane to attend my 42^nd one. (California has hosted five of them, Texas, Ohio, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Kansas, have all hosted two). I’ve loved connecting with Orff colleagues from just about each of the 50 states, enjoyed the local cuisines, partook of some local sites from Niagara Falls to Graceland to the St. Louis Arch and beyond. 

 

In addition to the states represented in the Conferences, I’ve given workshops to local Orff chapters in each of the above and yet many more—Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland. That’s 42 out of 50 states.

 

Add to the above hitchhiking twice and driving several times across the country, reading U.S. travel odysseys like Travels with Charley, On the Road, the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test and more, enjoying books written by regional authors, singing songs from just about every region, visiting National Parks, watching the movies and TV Shows that highlight our both our local and national characters, listening to Jazz musicians from New Orleans, Kansas City, Memphis, Chicago, New York, L.A. and beyond. 

 

In short, I have seen and felt and savored so much of this country into which I was born, know so many good-hearted people from just about each and every place, have stood in awe of the natural beauty and enjoyed some of the vibrant and distinctive urban life. I’ve done my part to get to know and love all the nooks and crannies and distant corners of this marvelous land.

 

I also have discovered, from about 11^th grade on, so much shameful about our history. You know the list— stealing land from and killing the Native inhabitants, enslaving human beings in forced labor camps for centuries and making them legal property to be owned, continuing to deny their humanity and promised rights from the end of chattel slavery up through tomorrow morning, owning and limiting the rights of women in different, but related, ways, denying worker’s rights while rich fat cats grew richer. Shall I go on?

 

But this is par for the course in just about every country in the world. Behind it all was my perhaps naïve faith that we Americans were evolving, slowly—too slowly, but still moving forward—moving that moral arc towards justice, learning to be more tolerant, more understanding, more fair, more accepting of and appreciative of the diversity we’ve always crowed about in our “land of opportunity myth” but actual fought every step of the way. 

 

And now here we are, faced with my granddaughter having less agency than her grandmother, the unions virtually gone, the fat cats gliding by without having to give back to the common good, the needed acceptance and celebration of the LGBTQ community in danger of reversal, the permission freely granted by those in power to be the worst versions of ourselves. The inmates now will be running the asylum, voted in by choice by those oblivious to the insanity of that. 

 

I used to love the moment at each Orff Conference when the Presidents of some 50 plus local chapters marched across the stage with their hand-made banners while the audience cheered for each state and region. Not now. Now I predict it will leave a bitter taste in my mouth. In my head, I know good people are everywhere and it is wrong to blame an entire state, but in my heart, it just hurts. (And by the way, I heard that 17% of my own city’s population endorsed this blow to democracy and civility and that is 16% too much for my taste.) I signed two contracts today for work in Brazil and Hong Kong and had to give my address. I found it hard to write “U.S.A.” Until we wake up, I believe we should change to “D.S.A.”—the Disunited States of America. Might as well be honest. 

 

Poor Charley and his friend John Steinbeck would be so disheartened.